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WAR 

BT 

PIERE LOTI 




Book 

GoEyright N?. . 



COPVRiGHT DEPOSIT. 



WAR 



WAR 



BY 

PIERRE LOTI 

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY 

MARJORIE LAURIE 




PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

1917 






COPTRIGHT, I0I7i BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 



Printed by J . B. Lippincott Company 
The Washington Square Press, Philadelphia, U. S. A. 

Mi -7 1917 



780 



TO MY FRIEND 
LOUIS BARTHOU, P.L. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



I. A Letter to the Minister of 

Marine 9 

II. Two Poor Little Nestlings of 

Belgium 12 

III. A Gay Little Scene at the Battle 

Front 18 

IV. Letter to Enver Pasha 28 

V. Another Scene at the Battle Front 34 

VI. The Phantom Basilica 53 

VII. The Flag Which Our Naval Bri- 
gade do not Yet Possess 68 

VIII. Tahiti and the Savages with Pink 

Skins Like Boiled Pig 80 

IX. A Little Hussar 85 

X. An Evening at Ypres 95 

XI. At the General Headquarters of 

the Belgian Army Ill 

XII. Some Words Uttered by Her Maj- 
esty, the Queen of the Belgians . 127 

XIII. An Appeal on Behalf of the Seri- 

ously Wounded in the East 139 

XIV. Serbia in the Balkan War 148 

XV. Above All Let Us Never Forget! . 151 

XVI. The Inn of the Good Samaritan. . . 157 

7 



8 CONTENTS 

XVII. For the Rescue of Our Wounded. . 174 

XVIII. At Rheims 177 

XIX. The Death-Bearing Gas 192 

XX. All-Souls' Day with the Armies 

at the Front 205 

XXI. The Cross of Honour for the Flag 

of the Naval Brigade 211 

XXII. The Absent-Minded Pilgrim 219 

XXIII. The First Sunshine of March 242 

XXIV. At Soissons 265 

XXV. The Two Gorgon Heads 299 



WAR 

I 

A LETTER TO THE MINISTER OP 
MARINE 

Captain J. Viaud of the Naval Reserve, 
to the Minister of Marine. 

Rochefort, August 18th, 1914. 

Sir, 

When I was recalled to active service 
on the outbreak of war I had hopes of per- 
forming some duty less insignificant than 
that which was assigned to me in our dock- 
yards. 

Believe me, I have no reproaches to 
make, for I am very well aware that the 
Navy will not fill the principal role in this 
war, and that all my comrades of the same 
rank are likewise destined to almost com- 
plete inaction for mere lack of oppor- 



10 WAR 

tunity, like myself doomed, alas! to see 
their energies sapped, their spirits in 
torment. 

But let me invoke the other name I bear. 
The average man is not as a rule well 
versed in Naval Regulations. Will it not, 
then, be a bad example in our dear coun- 
try, where everyone is doing his duty so 
splendidly, if Pierre Loti is to serve no 
useful end u l The exercise of two profes- 
sions places me as an officer in a some- 
what exceptional position, does it not? 
Forgive me then for soliciting a degree 
of exceptional and indulgent treatment. I 
should accept with joy, with pride, any 
position whatsoever that would bring me 
nearer to the fighting-line, even if it were 
a very subordinate post, one much below 
the dignity of my five rows of gold braid. 

Or, on the other hand, in the last resort, 
could I not be appointed a supernumerary 
on special duty on some ship which might 



WAR 11 

have a chance of seeing real fighting? I 
assure you that I should find some means 
of making myself useful there. Or, finally, 
if there are too many rules and regula- 
tions in the way, would you grant me, sir, 
while waiting until my services may be 
required by the Fleet, liberty to come and 
go, so that I may try to find some kind of 
employment, even if it be only ambulance 
work? My lot is hard, and no one will 
understand that the mere fact that I am a 
captain in the Naval Reserve dooms me 
to almost complete inaction, while all 
France is in arms. 

(Signed) Jitlien Viaud. 
(Pierre Loti.) 



n 

TWO POOR LITTLE NESTLINGS OF 
BELGIUM 

August, 1914. 
One evening a train full of Belgian ref- 
ugees had just entered the railway station 
of one of our southern towns. Worn out 
and dazed, the poor martyrs stepped down 
slowly, one by one, on to the unfamiliar 
platform where Frenchmen were waiting 
to welcome them. Carrying with them a 
few articles of clothing, caught up at hap- 
hazard, they had climbed up into the 
coaches without so much as asking them- 
selves what was their destination. They 
had taken refuge there in hurried flight, 
desperate flight from horror and death, 
from fire, mutilations unspeakable and 
Sadie outrages — such things, deemed no 
longer possible on earth, had been brood- 

12 



WAR 13 

ing still, it seemed, in the depths of pie- 
tistic German brains, and, like an ultimate 
spewing forth of primeval barbarities, had 
burst suddenly upon their country and 
upon our own. Village, hearth, family — 
nothing remained to them; without pur- 
pose, like waifs and strays, they had 
drifted there, and in the eyes of all lay 
horror and anguish. Among them were 
many children, little girls, whose parents 
were lost in the midst of conflagrations or 
battles ; aged grandmothers, too, now alone 
in the world, who had fled, scarce knowing 
why, clinging no longer to life, yet urged 
on by some obscure instinct of self-pres- 
ervation. The faces of these aged women 
expressed no emotion, not even despair; 
it seemed as if their souls had actually 
abandoned their bodies and reason their 
brains. 

Lost in that mournful throng were two 
quite young children, holding each other 



M WAR 

tightly by the hand, two little boys, evi- 
dently two little brothers. The elder, five 
years of age perhaps, was protecting the 
younger, whose age may have been three. 
No one claimed them; no one knew them. 
When they found themselves alone, how- 
was it that they understood that If they 
would esoape death they, too, must climb 
Into thai train 1 Their clothes were neat, 

and they wore warm little woollen stock- 

ings. Evidently they belonged to humble 
but careful parents. Doubtless they were 

the sons o( one of those glorious soldiers 

of Belgium who fell like heroes upon the 

field Of honour sons of a father who, in 
the moment of death, must needs have be- 
stowed upon them one last and tender 
thought. So overwhelmed were they with 
weariness ami want of sleep that they did 
not even cry. Scarcely could they stand 
upright, They could not answer the ques- 
tions that were put to them, hut above all 



WAIt l. r > 

they refused to Let go of each other; that 
they would aot do. At last the big, elder 
brother, still gripping the other's band for 

fear of losing him, realised the respon- 
sibilities of his character of protector; be 
summoned up strength to speak to the lady 
with the brassard, who was bending down 

to him. 

"Madame," be said, in a very small, 

beseeching voice, already hair asleep, 

"Madame, is anyone going to put us to 

bed!" 

For the moment this was the only wish 

they were, capable of forming; all that they 
looked tor from the mercy of mankind was 
that someone would be so good as to put 
them to bed. They were soon put to bed, 

together, you may be Sure, and they went 
to sleep at Once, still holding hands and 

nestling close to each other, both sinking 

in the same instant into the peaceful 
oblivion of children's slumbers. 



16 WAR 

One day long ago, in the China Seas 
during the war, two bewildered little birds, 
two tiny little birds, smaller even than our 
wren, had made their way, I know not 
how, on board our iron-clad and into our 
admiral's quarters. No one, to be sure, 
had sought to frighten them, and all day 
long they had fluttered about from side to 
side, perching on cornices or on green 
plants. By nightfall I had forgotten them, 
when the admiral sent for me. It was to 
show me, with emotion, his two little visi- 
tors ; they had gone to sleep in his room, 
perched on one leg upon a silken cord 
fastened above his bed. Like two little 
balls of feathers, touching and almost 
mingling in one, they slept close, very 
close together, without the slightest fear, 
as if very sure of our pity. 

And these poor little Belgian children, 
sleeping side by side, made me think of 
those two nestlings, astray in the midst of 



WAR 17 

the China Seas. Theirs, too, was the same 
trust; theirs the same innocent slumber. 
But these children were to be protected 
with a far more tender solicitude. 



in 

A GAY LITTLE SCENE AT THE 
BATTLE FRONT 

October, 1914. 

At about eleven o'clock in the morning 
of that day I arrived at a village — its 
name I have, let us say, forgotten. My 
companion was an English commandant, 
whom the fortunes of war had given me 
for comrade since the previous evening. 
Our path was lighted by that great and 
genial magician, the sun — a radiant sun, 
a holiday sun, transfiguring and beauti- 
fying all things. This occurred in a de- 
partment in the extreme north of France, 
which one it was I have never known, but 
the weather was so fine that we might have 
imagined ourselves in Provence. 

For nearly two hours our way lay 

18 



WAR 19 

hemmed in between two columns of 
soldiers, marching in opposite directions. 
On our right were the English going into 
action, very clean, very fresh, with an air 
of satisfaction and in high spirits. They 
were admirably equipped and their horses 
in the pink of condition. On our left were 
French Artillerymen coming back from 
the Titanic battle to enjoy a little rest. 
The latter were coated with dust, and some 
wore bandages round arm and forehead, 
but they still preserved their gaiety of 
countenance and the aspect of healthy men, 
and they marched in sections in good order. 
They were actually bringing back quan- 
tities of empty cartridge cases, which 
they had found time to collect, a sure proof 
that they had withdrawn from the scene 
of action at their leisure, unhurried and 
unafraid — victorious soldiers to whom 
their chiefs had prescribed a few days' 
respite. In the distance we heard a noise 



20 WA E 

like a thunderstorm, muffled at first, to 
which we were drawing nearer and yel 
nearer. Peasants were working in the ad- 
joining fields as it' nothing unusual were 
happening, and yet they were not sure 
that the savages, who were responsible 
for such tumuli yonder, would not come 
back one of these days and pillage every- 
thing. Here and there in the meadows, 
on the grass, sat groups of fugitives, clus- 
tered around little wood tires. The scene 
would have been dismal enough on a 
gloomy day, but the sun managed to shed 
a cheerful light upon it. They cooked 
their meals in gipsy fashion, surrounded 
by bundles in which they had hurriedly 
packed together their scanty clothing in 
the terrible rush for safety. 

Our motor car was rilled with packets 
of cigarettes and with newspapers, which 
kind souls had commissioned us to carry 
to the men in the firing-line, and so slow 



WA B 21 

was our progress, so closely were we 
hemmed in by the two columns of soldiers, 
that wo were able to distribute our gifts 
through the doors of the oar, to the Eng- 
lish on our right, to the French on our 
left. They stretched out their hands to 
catch thorn in mid-air, and thanked us 
With a smile and a quick salute. 

There wore also villagers who travelled 
along that overcrowded road mingling in 
Confusion with the soldiers. I remember 
a wary pretty young peasant woman, who 
was dragging along by a string, in the 
midst of the English transport wagons, a 
little go-cart with two sleeping babies. 
She was toiling along, for the gradient 
just there was steep. A handsome Scotch 
sergeant, with a golden moustache, who 
sat on the back of the nearest wagon smok- 
ing a cigarette and dangling his legs, beck- 
oned to her. 

"Give me the end of your string." 



22 WAR 

She understood and accepted his offer 
with a smile of pretty confusion. The 
Scotchman wound the fragile tow-rope 
round his left arm, keeping his right arm 
free so that he might go on smoking. So 
it was really he who brought along these 
two babies of France, while the heavy 
transport lorry drew their little cart like 
a feather. 

When we entered the village, the sun 
shone with increasing splendour. Such 
chaos, such confusion prevailed there as 
had never been seen before, and after this 
war, unparalleled in history, will never 
again be witnessed. Uniforms of every 
description, weapons of every sort, Scots, 
French cuirassiers, Turcos, Zouaves, Bed- 
ouins, whose burnouses swung upwards 
with a noble gesture as they saluted. The 
church square was blocked with huge 
English motor-omnibuses that had once 
been a means of communication in the 



WAR 23 

streets of London, and still displayed in 
large letters the names of certain districts 
of that city. I shall be accused of exag- 
geration, but it is a fact that these omni- 
buses wore a look of astonishment at find- 
ing themselves rolling along, packed with 
soldiers, over the soil of France. 

All these people, mingled together in 
confusion, were making preparations for 
luncheon. Those savages yonder (who 
might perhaps arrive here on the morrow 
— who could say?) still conducted their 
great symphony, their incessant cannon- 
ade, but no one paid any attention to it. 
Who, moreover, could be uneasy in such 
beautiful surroundings, such surprising 
autumn sunshine, while roses still grew on 
the walls, and many-coloured dahlias in 
gardens that the white frost had scarcely 
touched? Everyone settled down to the 
meal and made the best of things. You 
would have thought you were looking at 



24 WAR 

a festival, a somewhat incongruous and 
unusual festival, to be sure, improvised in 
the vicinity of some tower of Babel. Girls 
wandered about among the groups; little 
fair-haired children gave away fruit they 
had gathered in their own orchards. Scots- 
men in shirt-sleeves were persuaded that 
the country they were in was warm by 
comparison with their own. Priests and 
Eed Cross sisters were finding seats for 
the wounded on packing-cases. One good 
old sister, with a face like parchment, and 
frank, pretty eyes under her mob-cap, 
took infinite pains to make a Zouave com- 
fortable, whose arms were both wrapped 
in bandages. Doubtless she would pres- 
ently feed him as if he were a little child. 
We ourselves, the Englishman and I, 
were very hungry, so we made our way 
to the pleasant-looking inn, where officers 
were already seated at table with soldiers 
of lower rank. (In these times of tor- 



WAR 25 

ment in which we live hierarchal barriers 
no longer exist.) 

"I could certainly give you roast beef 
and rabbit saute/' said the innkeeper, " but 
as for bread, no indeed ! it is not to be had ; 
you cannot buy bread anywhere at any 
price." 

"Ah!" said my comrade, the English 
commandant, "and what about those ex- 
cellent loaves over there standing up 
against the door*?" 

"Oh, those loaves belong to a general 
who sent them here, because he is coming 
to luncheon with his aides-de-camp." 

Hardly had he turned his back when my 
companion hastily drew a knife from his 
pocket, sliced off the end of one of those 
golden loaves, and hid it under his coat. 

"We have found some bread," he said 
calmly to the innkeeper, "so you can bring 
luncheon." 

So, seated beside an Arab officer of la 



26 WAR 

Grande Tente, dressed in a red burnous, 
we luncheon gaily with our guests, the 
soldier-chauffeurs of our motor car. 

When we left the inn to continue our 
journey the festival of the sun was at its 
height; it cast a glad light upon that ill- 
assorted throng and the strange motor- 
omnibuses. A convoy of German pris- 
oners was crossing the square ; bestial and 
sly of countenance they marched between 
our own soldiers, who kept time infinitely 
better than they; scarcely a glance was 
thrown at them. 

The old nun I spoke of, so old and so 
pure-eyed, was helping her Zouave to 
smoke a cigarette, holding it to his lips 
rather awkwardly with trembling, grand- 
motherly solicitude. At the same time she 
seemed to be telling him some quite amus- 
ing stories — with the innocent, ingenuous 
merriment of which good nuns have the 
secret — for they were both laughing. Who 



WAR 27 

can say what little childish tale it may have 
been? An old parish priest, who was 
smoking his pipe near them — without any 
particular refinement, I am bound to admit 
— laughed, too, to see them laugh. And 
just as we were going into our car to con- 
tinue our journey to those regions of 
horror where the cannon were thundering, 
a little girl of twelve ran and plucked a 
sheaf of autumn asters from her garden 
to deck us with flowers. 

What good people there are still in the 
world 1 And how greatly has the aggres- 
sion of German savages reinforced those 
tender bonds of brotherhood that unite 
all who are truly of the human species. 



IV 

LETTER TO ENVER PASHA 
Rochefort, September 4th, 1914. 

My Dear and Great Friend, 

Forgive my letter for the sake of ray 
affection and admiration for yourself and 
of my regard for your country, which to 
some extent I have made my own. In the 
country round Tripoli you played the part 
of splendid hero, without fear and with- 
out reproach, holding your own, ten men 
against a thousand. In Thrace it was you 
who recovered Adrianople for Turkey, 
and this feat, the recapture of that town 
of heroes, you effected almost without 
bloodshed. Everywhere, with the violence 
necessitated by the circumstances, you 
suppressed cruelty and brigandage. I wit- 
nessed your indignation against the atroei- 

28 



WAR 29 

ties of the Bulgarians, and you yourself 
desired me to visit, in your service motor 
car, the ruins of those villages through 
which the assassins had passed. 

Well, I will tell you a fact of which you 
are doubtless yet ignorant: In Belgium, 
in France, and moreover by order, the 
Germans are committing these same abomi- 
nations which the Bulgarians committed 
in your country, and they are a thousand 
times more detestable still, for the Bul- 
garians were primitive mountaineers 
under the influence of fanaticism, whereas 
these others are civilised. Civilised? So 
fundamental is their brutality that culture 
has no grasp of their souls and nothing 
can be expected of them. 

Turkey to-day desires to win back her 
islands; this point no one who is not 
blinded with prejudice can fail to under- 
stand. But I tremble lest she should go 
too far in this war. Alas ! well do I divine 



30 WAR 

the pressure that is brought to bear upon 
your dear country and yourself by that 
execrable being, the incarnation of all the 
vices of the Prussian race, ferocity, arro- 
gance, and trickery. Doubtless he has 
seen good to take advantage of your fine 
and ardent patriotism, luring you on with 
illusive promises of revenge. Beware of 
his lies! Assuredly he has contrived to 
keep truth from reaching you, else would 
he have alienated your loyal soldier's 
heart. Even as he has convinced a section 
of his own people, so he has known how 
to persuade you that these butcheries were 
forced upon him. It is not so ; they were 
planned long ago with devilish cynicism. 
He has succeeded in inspiring you with 
faith in his victories, though he knows, 
as to-day the whole world knows, that in 
the end the triumph will rest with us. 
And even if by some impossible chance we 
were to succumb for a time, neverthless 



WAR 31 

would Prussia and her dynasty of tigerish 
brutes remain nailed fast forever to the 
most shameful pillory in all the history 
of mankind. 

How deeply should I suffer were I to 
see our dear Turkey, by this wretch, hurl 
herself in his train into a terrible venture. 
More painful still were it to witness her 
dishonour, should she associate herself 
with these ultimate barbarians in their 
attack upon civilisation. Oh, could you 
but know with what infinite loathing the 
whole world looks upon the Prussian race ! 

Alas ! you owe no debt to France, that I 
know only too well. We lent our authority 
to Italy's attempt upon Tripoli. Later, 
in the beginning of the Balkan War, we 
forgot the age-long hospitality so gener- 
ously offered to us Frenchmen, to our 
seminaries, to our culture, to our language, 
which you have almost made your own. 
In thoughtlessness and ignorance we sided 



32 WAR 

with your neighbours, from whom our 
nation received naught but ill-will and 
persecution. We initiated against you a 
campaign of calumny, and only too late 
we bave acknowledged its Injustice. The 
Germans, on the other hand, wore alone 
in affording you a little— oh, a very little! 
— encouragement Bui even so, it is not 
worth your committing suicide for their 
Bakes, Moreover, you see, in this very 
hour, these people are succeeding in put- 
ting themselves outside the pale of hu- 
manity. To march in their company 
would become not only a danger, but a 
degradation. 

Your influence over your country is 
fully justified; may you hold her back on 
that fatal decline to whieh she seems com- 
mitted. My letter will he long on the way, 
but when it arrives your eyes may perhaps 
be already opened, despite the web of lies 
in whieh Germany has entrammelled you. 



WAR 33 

Forgive me if I wish to be of the Dumber 

of those by whose means some hint of the 
truth may read] you. 

I maintain an unwavering faith in our 
final triumph, but on the day of our de- 
liveranee how would iny joy he veiled in 
mourning if my seeorid eountry, my 
country of the Orient, were to bury itself 
under the debris of the hideous Empire 
of Prussia. 



ANOTHER SCENE AT THE 
BATTLE FRONT 

October, 1914. 
Whereabouts, you may ask, did this come 
to pass ? Well, it is one of the peculiarities 
of this war, that in spite of my familiarity 
with maps, and notwithstanding the excel- 
lence in detail of the plans which I carry 
about with me, I never know where I am. 
At any rate this certainly happened some- 
where. I have, moreover, a sad conviction 
that it happened in France. I should so 
much have preferred it to have happened 
in Germany, for it was close up to the 
enemy's lines, under fire of their guns. 

I had travelled by motor car since morn- 
ing, and had passed through more towns, 
large and small, than I can count. I re- 

34 



WAR 35 

member one scene in a village where I 
halted, a village which had certainly never 
before seen motor-omnibuses or throngs 
of soldiers and horses. Some fifty Ger- 
man prisoners were brought in. They 
were unshaven, unshorn, and highly un- 
prepossessing. I will not flatter them by 
saying that they looked like savages, for 
true savages in the bush are seldom lacking 
either in distinction or grace of bearing. 
Such air as these Germans had was a black- 
guard air of doltish ugliness — dull, gross, 
incurable. 

A pretty girl of somewhat doubtful 
character, with feathers in her hat, who 
had taken up a position there to watch 
them go past, stared at them with ill-con- 
cealed resentment. 

" Oh indeed, is it with freaks like those 
that their dirty Kaiser invites us to breed 
for beauty? God's truth!" and she 



36 WAR 

clinched her unfinished phrase by spitting 
on the ground. 

For the next hour or two I passed 
through a deserted countryside, woods in 
autumn colouring and leafless forests 
which seemed interminable under a 
gloomy sky. It was cold, with that bitter, 
penetrating chill which we hardly know 
in my home in south-west France, and 
which seemed characteristic of northern 
lands. 

From time to time a village through 
which the barbarians had passed dis- 
played to us its ruins, charred and black- 
ened by tire. Here and there by the way- 
side lay little grave-mounds, either singly 
or grouped together — mounds lately dug ; 
a few leaves had been scattered above 
them and a cross made of two sticks. 
Soldiers, their names now for ever for- 
gotten, had fallen there exhausted and had 
breathed their last with none to help them. 



WAR 37 

We scarcely noticed them, for we raced 
along with ever-increasing speed, because 
the night of late October was already clos- 
ing rapidly in upon us. As the day ad- 
vanced a mist almost wintry in character 
thickened around us like a shroud. Si- 
lence pervaded with still deeper melan- 
choly all that countryside, which, although 

the barbarians had been expelled From it, 
still had memories of all those butcheries, 
ravings, outcries, and conflagrations. 

In the midst of a forest, near a hamlet, 

of which nothing remained save; fragments 
of calcined walls, there were two graves 

Lying Side by side;. Near these I halted 

to look at a little girl of twelve years, quite 
alone there, arranging bunches of flowers 
sprinkled with water, some poor chrys- 
anthemums from her ruined plot of gar- 
den, some wild flowers too, the last scabious 
of the season, gathered in that place of 

mourning. 



38 WAR 

" Were they friends of yours, my child, 
those two who are sleeping there ?" 

"Oh no, sir, but I know that they were 
Frenchmen; I saw them being buried. 
They were young, sir, and their moustaches 
were scarcely grown. " 

There was no inscription on these 
crosses, soon to be blown down by winter 
winds and to crumble away in the grass. 
Who were they? Sons of peasants, of 
simple citizens, of aristocrats? Who 
weeps for them? Is it a mother in skil- 
fully fashioned draperies of crape ? Is it 
a mother in the homely weeds of a peasant 
woman ? Whichever it be, those who loved 
them will live and die without ever know- 
ing that they lie mouldering there by the 
side of a lonely road on the northern boun- 
dary of France ; without ever knowing that 
this kind little girl, whose own home lay 
desolate, brought them an offering of 
flowers one autumn evening, while with 



WAR 39 

the advent of night a bitter cold was de- 
scending upon the forest which wrapped 
them round. 

Farther on I came to a village, the head- 
quarters of a general officer in command 
of an army corps. Here an officer joined 
me in my motor car, who undertook to 
guide me to one particular point of the 
vast battle front. 

We drove on rapidly for another hour 
through a country without inhabitants. In 
the meantime we passed one of these long 
convoys of what were once motor-omni- 
buses in Paris, but have been converted 
since the war into slaughter-houses on 
wheels. Townspeople, men and women, 
sat there once, where now sides of beef, 
all red and raw, swing suspended from 
hooks. If we did not know that in those 
fields yonder there were hundreds of thou- 
sands of men to be fed we might well ask 
why such things were being carted in the 



40 WAR 

midst of this deserted country through 
which we are hastening at top speed. 

The day is waning rapidly, and a con- 
tinuous rumbling of a storm begins to make 
itself heard, unchained seemingly on a 
level with the earth. For weeks now this 
same storm has thundered away without 
pause along a sinuous line stretching 
across France from east to west, a line 
on which daily, alas! new heaps of dead 
are piled up. 

"Here we are," said my guide. 

If I were not already familiar with the 
new characteristics wherewith the Ger- 
mans have endued a battle front, I should 
believe, in spite of the incessant cannon- 
ade, that he had made a mistake, for at 
first sight there is no sign either of army 
or of soldiers. We are in a place of sin- 
ister aspect, a vast plain; the greyish 
ground is stripped of its turf and torn up ; 
trees here and there are shattered more or 



WAR 41 

less completely, as if by some cataclysm 
of thunderbolts or hailstones. There is 
no trace of human existence, not even the 
ruins of a village; nothing characteristic 
of any period, either of historical or even 
of geological development. Grazing into 
the distance at the far-flung forest skyline 
fading on all sides into the darkening mists 
of twilight, we might well believe ourselves 
to have reverted to a prehistoric epoch of 
the world's history. 

"Here we are." 

That means that it is time to hide our 
motor car under some trees or it will attract 
a rain of shells and endanger the lives of 
our chauffeurs, for in that misty forest 
opposite there are many wicked eyes 
watching us through wonderful binoc- 
ulars, by whose aid they are as keen of 
sight as great birds of prey. To reach the 
firing-line, then, it is incumbent on us to 
proceed on foot. 



42 WAR 

How strange the ground looks! It is 
riddled with shell-holes, resembling enor- 
mous craters; in another place it is scarred 
and pierced and sown with pointed bul- 
lets, copper cartridge-cases, fragments of 
spiked helmets, and barbarian tilth of 
oilier sorts. Bui in spite of its deserted 
appearance, this region is nevertheless 
thickly populated, only the inhabitants are 
no doubt troglodytes, for their dwellings, 
scattered about and invisible at first sight, 
are a kind of cave or molehill, half cov- 
ered with branches and leaves. 1 had seen 
the same kind of architecture once upon 
a time on Easter Island, and the sight of 
these dwellings of men in this scenery of 
primeval forest completes our earlier im- 
pression of having Leapt backwards into 
the abyss of time. 

Of a truth, \o force upon us such a re- 
version was a right Prussian artifice. 
War, which was once a gallant affair of 



WAR 43 

parades in the sunshine, of beautiful uni- 
forms and of music, war they have ren- 
dered a mean and ugly thing. They wage 
it like burrowing beasts, and obviously 
there was nothing left for us but to imi- 
tate them. 

In the meantime here and there heads 
look out from the excavations to see who 
is coming. There is nothing prehistoric 
about these heads, any more than there is 
about the service-caps they are wearing; 
these are the faces of our own soldiers, 
with an air of health and good humour 
and of amusement at having to live there 
like rabbits. A sergeant comes up to us ; 
he is as earthy as a mole that has not had 
time to clean itself, but he has a merry 
look of youth and gaiety. 

"Take two or three men with you," I 
say to him, "and go and unpack my motor 
car, down there behind the trees. You will 
find a thousand packets of cigarettes and 



44 WAR 

some picture-papers which some people in 
Paris have sent you to help to pass the 
time in the trenches.' ' 

What a pity that I cannot take back 
and show, as a thanksgiving to the kind 
donors, the smiles of satisfaction with 
which their gifts were welcomed. 

Another mile or two have still to be cov- 
ered on foot before we reach the firing- 
line. An icy wind blows from the forests 
opposite that are yet more deeply drowned 
in black mists, forests in the enemy's 
hands, where the counterfeit thunder- 
storm is grumbling. This plain with its 
miserable molehills is a dismal place in 
the twilight, and I marvel that they can 
be so gay, these dear soldiers of ours, in the 
midst of the desolation surrounding them. 

I cross this piece of ground, riddled with 
holes ; the tempest of shot has spared here 
and there a tuft of grass, a little moss, a 
poor flower. The first place I reach is a 



WAR 45 

line of defence in course of construction, 
which will be the second line of defence, 
to meet the improbable event of the first 
line, which lies farther ahead, having to be 
abandoned. Our soldiers are working like 
navvies with shovels and picks in their 
hands. They are all resolute and happy, 
anxious to finish their work, and it will 
be formidable indeed, surrounded as it is 
with most deadly ambushes. It was the 
Germans, I admit, whose scheming, evil 
brains devised this whole system of gal- 
leries and snares ; but we, more subtle and 
alert than they, have, in a few days, 
equalled them, if we have not beaten them, 
at their own game. 

A mile farther on is the first line. It is 
full of soldiers, for this is the trench that 
must withstand the shock of the barbar- 
ians' onset; day and night it is always 
ready to bristle with rifles, and they who 
hold the trench, gone to earth scarcely for 



46 WAR 

a moment, know that they may expect a1 
any minute the daily shower of shells. 
Then heads, rash enough to show them- 
selves above the parapet, will be shot 
away, breasts shattered, entrails torn. 
They know, ioi\ (hat they must be pre 
pared to encounter a1 any unforeseen hour, 
in the pale sunlight or in the blackness of 
midnight, onslaughts of those barbarians 
with whom the i'ovcM opposite still swarms. 
They know how they will come on a1 a 
run, with shouts intended to terrify them, 

linked arm in arm into one infuriated 
mass, and how they will find means, as 
ever, to do much harm before death over- 
takes them entangled in our barbed wire. 
All this they know, for they have already 
Seen it, but nevertheless they smile a seri- 
ous, dignified smile. They have been 
nearly a week in this trench, waiting to 
be relieved, and they make no complaints. 
"We are well fed," they sav, "we eat 



WA R 47 

when we arc hungry. As long as it does 
not rain we keep ourselves warm at night 
in our fox-holes with good thick blankets. 
But not all of us yet have woollen under- 
clothing for the winter, and we shall need 
it soon. When you go back to Paris, 

Colonel, perhaps you will be so kind as to 
bring this to the notice of Government 

and oi* all tint ladies too, who are working 
tor US." 

("Colonel" — the soldiers have no other 

title for officers with five rows of gold 
braid. On the last expedition to China I 
had already been called colonel, but I did 
not expect, alas! that J should be called 
so again during a war on the soil of 
Prance.) 

These men who are talking to me at the 
edge of, or actually in, the trench belong 
to the most diverse social grades. Some 
were leisured dandies, some artisans, some 
day labourers, and there are even some 



IS WA R 

who wear their eaps ni too rakisli an angle 
and whoso Language smacks of the ring-, 
into whose past it is better not to pry too 
curiously, Set they have become not only 
good soldiers, hut good men, tor this war, 
while it has drawn us closer together, lias 
at the same time purified as and ennobled 
ns. This benefit at Least the Germans will, 

involuntarily, have bestowed upon ns, and 

indeed it is worth the trouble. Moreover 

our soldiers all know to-day why they are 
fighting, and therein lies their supreme 
strength. Their indignation will inspire 
them till their latest breath. 

"When yon have seen, 9 ' said two young 
Breton peasants to me, "when yon have 
seen with your own eyes what these brutes 
do in the villages they pass through, it is 
natural, is it not, to give yonr life to try 
to prevent them from doing as mneh in 
yonr own home'" 

The cannonade roared an aeeonrpani- 



W A B 49 

ment in its deep, unceasing buss to this 
ingenuous statement. 

Now this is the spirit thai prevails in- 
exhaustibly from one end of tin; fighting- 
line to the other. Everywhere there is tint 
same determination arid courage. WTiether 
here or there, a talk with any of these 

soldiers is equally reassuring, and calls 

forth the Same admiration. 

But it is strange to reflect that in this 
twentieth century of ours, in order to pro- 
tect ourselves from barbarism and hor- 
ror, we have had to establish trenehes such 

as these, In double and treble lines, cross- 
ing our dear country from east to west 
along an unbroken front of hundreds of 
miles, like a kind of Great Wall of China. 
But a hundred times more formidable than 
the original wall, the defence of the Mon- 
golians, is this wall of OUTS, a wall prac- 
tieally subterranean, which winds along 
stealthily, manned by all the heroic youth 

4 



50 WAR 

of France, ever on the alert, ever in the 
midst of bloodshed. 

The twilight this evening, under the 
sullen sky, lingers sadly, and will not come 
to an end. It appeared to me to begin two 
hours ago, and yet it is still light enough 
to see. Before us, distinguishable as yet 
to sight or imagination, lie two sections of 
a forest, unfolding itself beyond range of 
vision, the contours of its more distant sec- 
tion almost lost in darkness. Colder still 
grows the wind, and my heart contracts 
with the still more painful impression of 
a backward plunge, without shelter and 
without refuge, into primeval barbarism. 

" Every evening at this hour, Colonel, 
for the last week, we have had our little 
shower of shells. If you have time to stay 
a short while you will see how quickly they 
fire and almost without aiming." 

As for time, well, I have really hardly 
any to spare, and, besides, I have had other 



WAR 51 

opportunities of observing how quickly 
they fire ' ' almost without aiming. ' ' Some- 
times it might be mistaken for a display 
of fireworks, and it is to be supposed that 
they have more projectiles than they know 
what to do with. Nevertheless I shall be 
delighted to stay a few minutes longer and 
to witness the performance again in their 
company. 

Ah ! to be sure, a kind of whirring in the 
air like the flight of partridges — par- 
tridges travelling along very fast on metal 
wings. This is a change for us from the 
muffled voice of the cannonade we heard 
just before; it is now beginning to come 
in our direction. But it is much too high 
and much too far to the left — so much too 
far to the left that they surely cannot be 
aiming at us; they cannot be quite so 
stupid. Nevertheless we stop talking and 
listen with our ears pricked — a dozen 
shells, and then no more. 



52 WAR 

"They have finished," the men tell me 
then; "their hour is over now, and it was 
for our comrades down there. You have 
no luck, Colonel ; this is the very first time 
that it was not we who caught it, and, be- 
sides, you would think they were tired this 
evening, the Bodies." 

It is dark and I ought to be far away. 
Moreover, they are all going to sleep, for 
obviously they cannot risk showing a light ; 
cigarettes are the limit of indulgence. I 
shake hands with a whole line of soldiers 
and leave them asleep, poor children of 
France, in their dormitory, which in the 
silence and darkness has grown as dismal 
as a long, common grave in a cemetery. 



VI 

THE PHANTOM BASILICA 

October, 1914. 

To gaze upon her, our legendary and 
wonderful basilica of Prance, to bid her 
a last farewell before she should crumble 
away to her inevitable downfall, I had 
ordered a detour of two hours in my ser- 
vice motor car at the end of some special 
duty from which I was returning. 

The October morning was misty and 
cold. The hillsides of Champagne were 
deserted that day, and their vineyards with 
dark brown leaves, wet with rain, seemed 
to be wrapped completely in a kind of 
shining fleece. We had also passed through 
a forest, keeping our eyes open and our 
weapons ready in case of a meeting with 
Uhlan marauders. 

63 



54 WAR 

At last, far away in the fog, uplifting 

all its great height above a sprinkling of 
reddish squares, doubtless the roofs of 
houses, we saw the form of a mighty 
church. This was evidently the basilica. 

At the entrance to Rheims there are de- 
fences of all kinds: stone barriers, 
trenches, chevaux dc frise, sentinels with 
crossed bayonets. To gain admission it is 
not sufficient to be in uniform and military 
accoutrements; explanations have to be 
made and the countersign given. 

In the great city where I am a stranger, 
1 have to ask my way to the cathedral, for 
it is no longer in sight. Its lofty grey 
silhouette, which, viewed from afar, dom- 
inated everything so imposingly, as a 
castle of giants would dominate the houses 
of dwarfs, now seems to have crouched 
down to hide itself. 

44 To get to the cathedral/ • people re- 
ply, u you must first turn to the right over 



WAR 55 

there, and then to the left, and then to the 
right, etc." 

And my motor car plunges into the 
crowded streets. There are many soldiers, 
regiments on the inarch, motor-ambu- 
lances in single file, but there are many 
ordinary footfarers, too, unconcerned as 
if nothing were happening, and there are 
even many well-dressed women, with 
prayer-books in their hands, in honour of 
Sunday. 

At a street-crossing there is a gathering 
of people in front of a house whose walls 
bear signs of recent damage, the reason 
being that a shell has just fallen there. 
It is just one of their little brutal jests, 
so to speak ; we understand the situation, 
look you; it is a simple pastime, just a 
matter of killing a few persons, on a Sun- 
day morning for choice, because there are 
more people in the streets on Sunday morn- 
ings. But it seems, indeed, as if this town 



56 WAR 

had reconciled itself to its lot, to live its 
life watched by the remorseless binoculars, 
under the tire of savages lurking on the 
neighbouring hillside. The wayfarers 

stop for a moment io look at the walls and 
the marks made by the shell-hursts, and 
then they quietly continue their Sunday 
walk. This time, we are told, it is women 
and little girls who lie weltering in their 
blood, victims of that amiable pleasantry. 
We hear about it, and then think no more 
oi' the matter, as it* it were of the smallest 
importance in times such as these. 

This quarter oi' the town is now deserted. 
Houses are closed: a silence as of mourn- 
ing prevails. And at the far end of a 
street appear the tall grey gates, the lofty 
pointed arches with their marvellous carv- 
ings and the soaring towers. There is no 
sound; there is not a living soul in the 
square w T here the phantom basilica still 
stands in majesty, where the wind blows 
cold and the sky is dark. 



WAR 57 

The basilica of Rheims still keeps its 

place as if by miracle, but so riddled and 
rent it is, that it seems ready to collapse 
at the slightest shock. It gives the im- 
pression of a huge mummy, still erect and 
majestic, but which the least touch would 
turn into ashes. The ground is strewn 
with its precious fragments. It has been 
hastily enclosed with a hoarding of white 
wood, and within its bounds lies, in little 
heaps, its consecrated dust, fragments of 
stucco, shivered panes of glass, heads of 
angels, clasped hands of saints, male and 
female. The calcined stone-work of the 
tower on the left, from top to bottom, has 
assumed a strange colour like that of baked 
flesh, and the saints, still standing upright 
in rank on the cornices, have been decor- 
ticated, as it were, by fire. They have no 
longer either faces or fingers, yet, still re- 
taining their human form, they resemble 
corpses ranged in rows, their contours but 



58 • WAR 

faintly defined under a kind of reddish 
shroud. 

We make a circuit of the square with- 
out meeting anyone, and the hoarding 
which isolates the fragile, still wonderful 
phantom is everywhere firmly closed. 

As for the old palace attached to the 
basilica, the episcopal palace where the 
kings of Prance were wont to repose on 
the day of their coronation, it is nothing- 
more than a ruin, without windows or roof, 
blackened all over by tongues of flame. 

What a peerless jewel was this church, 
more beautiful even than Notre-Dame de 
Paris, more open to the light, more ethe- 
real, more soaringly uplifted with its 
columns like long reeds, astonishingly 
fragile considering the weight they bear, 
a miracle of the religious art of France, 
a masterpiece which the faith of our an- 
cestors had wakened into being in all its 
mystic purity before the sensual ponder- 



WAR 59 

ousness of that which we have agreed to 
call the Renaissance had come to us from 
Italy, materialising and spoiling all. Oh, 
how gross, how cowardly, how imbecile 
was the brutality of those who fired those 
volleys of scrap-iron with full force 
against tracery of such delicacy, that had 
stayed aloft in the air for centuries in 
confidence, no battles, no invasions, no 
tempests ever daring to assail its beauty. 

That great, closed house yonder in the 
square must be the archbishop's palace. 
I venture to ring at the door and request 
the privilege of entering the church. 

"His Eminence," I am told, "is at 
Mass, but would soon return, if I would 
wait." 

And while I am waiting, the priest, who 
acts as my host, tells me the history of the 
burning of the episcopal palace. 

"First of all they sprinkled the roofs 
with I know not what diabolical prepara- 



60 WAR 

lion; then, when they threw their incen- 
diary bombs, the woodwork burnt like 
straw, and everywhere you saw jets of 
green Same which burned with a noise like 
thai of fireworks." 
1 ndeed the barbarians had long prepared 

with studied Foresight this deed of sac- 
rilege, in spite of their idiotically absurd 
pretexts and their shameless denials. That 

which they bad desired io destroy here was 
the very heart of ancient France, impelled 
as much by some superstitious fancy as by 
their own brutal instincts, and upon this 
task they bent their whole energy, while in 
the rest of the town nothing else, or almost 
nothing, suffered damage. 

"Could no attempt be made/' 1 ask, "to 
replace the burnt roof of the basilica, to 
cover over as soon as possible these arches, 
which will not otherwise withstand the 

ravages of next winter?" 

"Undoubtedly," he replies, "there is a 



WAR 61 

risk that at the first falls of snow, the first 
showers of rain, all this will crumble to 
ruins, more especially as the calcined 
stones have lost their power of resistance. 
But we cannot even attempt to preserve 
them a little, for the Germans do not let 
us out of their sight. It is the cathedral, 
always the cathedral, that they watch 
through their field-glasses, and as soon as 
a single person appears in the bell turret 
of a tower the rain of shells begins again. 
No, there is nothing to be done. It must 
be left to the grace of God." 

On his return, His Eminence graciously 
provides me with a guide, who has the keys 
of the hoarding, and at last I penetrate 
into the ruins of the basilica, into the nave, 
which, being stripped bare, appears the 
loftier and vaster for it. 

It is cold there and sad enough for tears. 
It is perhaps this unexpected chill, a chill 
far more piercing than that of the world 



62 WAR 

without, which at first grips you and dis- 
concerts you. Instead of the somewhat 
heavy perfume that generally hangs about 
old basilicas, smoke of so much incense 
burned there, emanations of so many biers 
blessed by the priests, of so many genera- 
tions who have hastened there to wrestle 
and pray — instead of this, there is a damp, 
icy wind which whistles through crevices 
in the walls, through broken windows and 
gaps in the vaults. Towards those vaults 
up yonder, pierced here and there by 
shrapnel, the eyes are raised, immediately, 
instinctively, to gaze at them. The sight 
is led up towards them, as it were, by all 
those columns that jut out, shooting aloft 
in sheaves, for their support. They have 
flying curves, these vaults, of exquisite 
grace, so designed, it seems, that they may 
not hinder prayers in their upward flight, 
nor force back to earth a gaze that aims 
at heaven. One never grows tired of bend- 



WAR 63 

ing the head backwards to gaze at them, 
those sacred vaults hastening to destruc- 
tion. And then high up, too, quite high 
up, throughout the whole length of the 
nave, is the long succession of those almost 
ethereal pointed arches which support the 
vaults and arches, alike, yet not rigidly 
uniform, and so harmonious, despite their 
elaborate carving, that they give rest to 
the eye that follows them upwards in their 
soaring perspective. These vast ceilings 
of stone are so airy in appearance, and 
moreover so distant, that they do not op- 
press or confine the spirit. Indeed they 
seem freed from all heaviness, almost 
insubstantial. 

Moreover, it is wiser to move on under 
that roof with head turned upward and 
not to watch too closely where the feet may 
fall, for that pavement, reverberating 
rather sadly, has been sullied and black- 
ened by charred human flesh. It is known 



64 WAR 

that on the day of the conflagration the 
church was full of wounded Germans lying 
on straw mattresses, which caught fire, 
and a scene of horror ensued, worthy of 
a vision of Dante; all these beings, their 
green wounds scorched by the flames, 
dragged themselves along screaming, on 
red stumps, trying to win through doors 
too narrow. Renowned, too, is the heroism 
of those stretcher-bearers, priests and 
nuns, who risked their lives in the midst of 
tailing bombs in their attempt to save 
these unhappy wretches, whom their own 
German brothers had not even thought to 
spare. Yet they did not succeed in saving 
all ; some remained and were burnt to death 
in the nave, leaving unseemly clots of blood 
on the sacred flagstones, where formerly 
processions of kings and queens had 
slowly trailed their ermine mantles to the 
sound of great organs and plain-song. 
"Look," said my guide, showing me a 



WAR 65 

wide hole in one of the aisles, "this is the 
work of a shell which they hurled at us 
yesterday evening. And now come and 
see the miracle." 

And he leads me into the choir where 
the statue of Joan of Arc, preserved it 
may be said by some special Providence, 
still stands unharmed, with its eyes of 
gentle ecstasy. 

The most irreparable disaster is the ruin 
of those great glass windows, which the 
mysterious artists of the thirteenth cen- 
tury had piously wrought in meditation 
and dreams, assembling together in hun- 
dreds, saints, male and female, with trans- 
lucent draperies and luminous aureoles. 
There again German scrap-iron has 
crashed through in great senseless volleys, 
shattering everything. Irreplaceable mas- 
terpieces are scattered on the flagstones in 
fragments that can never be reassembled 
— golds, reds and blues, of which the secret 

5 



66 WAR 

has been lost. Vanished are the transpar- 
ent rainbow colours, perished those saintly 
personages, in the pretty simplicity of 
their attitudes, with their small, pale, 
ecstatic faces; a thousand precious frag- 
ments of that glasswork, which in the 
course of centuries has acquired an irides- 
cence something in the manner of opals, 
lie on the ground, where indeed they still 
shine like gems. 

To-day there is silence in the basilica, 
as well as in the deserted square around 
it; a deathlike silence within these walls, 
which tor so long had vibrated to the voice 
of organs and the old ritual chants of 
France. The cold wind alone makes a kind 
of music this Sunday morning, and at 
times when it blows harder there is a 
tinkling like the fall of very light pearls. 
It is the falling of the little that still re- 
mained in place of the beautiful glass win- 
dows of the thirteenth century, crumbling 
away entirely, beyond recovery. 



WAR 67 

A whole splendid cycle of our history 
which seemed to live in the sanctuary, 
with a life almost tangible, though essen- 
tially spiritual, has suddenly been plunged 
into the abyss of things gone by, of which 
even the memory will soon pass away. 
The great barbarism has swept through 
this place, the modern barbarism from 
beyond the Rhine, a thousand times worse 
than the barbarism of old times, because 
it is doltishly, outrageously self-satisfied, 
and consequently fundamental, incurable, 
and final — destined, if it be not crushed, 
to overwhelm the world in a sinister night 
of eclipse. 

In truth it is strange how that statue 
of Joan of Arc in the choir has remained 
standing calm, intact, immaculate, with- 
out even the smallest scratch upon her 
gown. 



VII 

THE FLAG WHICH OUR NAVAL 
BRIGADE DO NOT YET POSSESS 

December, 1914. 
At first they were sent to Paris, those 
dear sailors of ours, so that the duty of 
policing the city, of maintaining order, 
enforcing silence and good behaviour 
might be entrusted to them — and I could 
not help smiling; it seemed so incongru- 
ous, this entirely new part which someone 
had thought fit to make them play. For 
truth to tell, between ourselves, correct be- 
haviour in the streets of towns has never 
been the especial boast of our excellent 
young friends. Nevertheless by dint of 
making up their minds to it and assuming 
an air of seriousness, they had acquitted 
themselves almost with honour up to the 

68 



WAR 69 

moment when they were freed from that 
insufferable constraint and were sent out- 
side the city to guard the posts in the en- 
trenched camp. That was already a little 
better, a little more after their own hearts. 
At last came a day of rejoicing and glori- 
ous intoxication, when they were told that 
they were all going into the firing-line. 

If they had had a flag that day, like their 
comrades of the land-forces, I will not 
assert that they would have marched away 
with more enthusiasm and gaiety, for that 
would have been impossible, but assuredly 
they would have marched more proudly, 
mustered around that sublime bauble, 
whose place nothing can ever take, what- 
ever may be said or done. Sailors, more 
perhaps than other men, cherish this de- 
votion to the flag, fostered in them by the 
touching ceremonial observed on our ships, 
where to the sound of the bugle the flag 
is unfurled each morning and furled each 



70 WAR 

evening, while officers and crew bare their 
heads in silence, in reverent salute. 

Yes, they would have been well pleased, 
our Naval Brigade, to have had a flag 
wherewith to march into the firing-line, 
but their officers said to them: 

44 You will certainly be given one in the 
end, as soon as you have won it yonder." 

And they went away singing, all with 
the same ardour of heroes ; all, I say, not 
only those who still uphold the admirable 
traditions of our Navy of old, but even the 
new recruits, who were already a little 
corrupted — no more than superficially, 
however — by disgusting, anti-military 
claptrap, but who had suddenly recovered 
their senses and were exalted at the sound 
of the German guns. All were united, 
resolute, disciplined, sobered, and dream- 
ing of having a flag on their return. 

They were sent in haste to Ghent to 
cover the retreat of the Belgian Army, 



WAR 71 

but on the way they were stopped at J)ix- 
mude, where the barbarians with pink 
skins like boiled pig were established in 
ten times their number, and where at all 
costs a stand was to be made to prevent 
the abominable onrush from spreading 
farther. 

They had been told : 

"The part assigned to you is one of 
danger and gravity ; we have need of your 
courage. In order to save the whole of 
our left wing you must sacrifice yourselves 
until reinforcements arrive. Try to hold 
out at least four days." 

And they held out twenty-six mortal 
days. They held out almost alone, for 
reinforcements, owing to unforeseen diffi- 
culties, were insufficient and long in com- 
ing. And of the six thousand that marched 
away, there are to-day not more than three 
thousand survivors. 

They had the bare necessities of life and 



72 WAR 

hardly those. Whenthey Left Paris, where 
the weather was warm and summery, they 
did not anticipate such hitler cold. Most 
of them wore nothing over their chests 
except the regulation jumper of cotton, 
striped with hlue, and light trousers, with 

nothing underneath, on their legs, and 

over all that, it is true, infantry ureal 
co:\i^ io which they were unaccustomed and 
which hampered their movements. For 

provisions they had nothing but some tins 
oi' confiture do singe* Naturally no one 
was prepared for what was practically iso- 
lation for twenty six long days. In the 
same circumstances ordinary troops, even 

though their peers in courage, could never 
have been equal io the occasion. Hut they 
had that, faculty of fighting through, com 
mon io seafaring men, which is acquired 

in the course of arduous voyages, in the 

colonies, among- the islands, and thanks 

1 Military slang term for tins of preserved moat. 



WA R 73 

to which a true Bailor can face any emer- 
gency a special way with them, after all 
so natural and moreover so merry withal, 
so tempered with ingratiating tact that it 
offends nobody. 

Well, then, they had fought through ; for 
after those three or Tour epic weeks, in 
which day and night they had battled like 
devils, in fire and water, the survivors were 

found well nourished, almost, and with 

hardly a cold among them. 

The only reproach, which I heard ad- 
dressed to thorn by their offieers, who had 
the honour to command them in the midst 
of the furnace, was that they could not 
reconcile themselves to the practice of 
crawling. Crawling is a mode of pro- 
gression introduced into modern warfare 

by German cunning, and it is well known 

that our soldiers have to be prepared for 
it by a long course of training. Now there 
had not been time to aeeustom those men 



71 WA R 

to the practice, and when it came to an 
attack they Bet out indeed as ordered, drag- 
ging themselves along on all fours, but, 

promptly carried away by their zeal, they 
stood up to get into their stride, and too 

many of them were mown down by 
shrapnel. 

One oi' them told me yesterday, in the 
words 1 now quote, how his company hav- 
ing been ordered io transfer themselves 
io another part of the battle front — but 
without let ting themselves be seen, walking 
along, bent double, at the bottom of a long 
interminable trench — were really unable 
to obey the order literally. 

"The trench was already half full of 
our poor dead comrades. And you will 
understand, sir, that in places where there 
were too many of them, it would have hurt 
us to walk on them; we could not do it. 
We came out of the ditch, and ran as fast 
as our legs would carry us along the slope 



WAR 75 

of the parapet, and the Bodies who saw us 
made haste to kill us. But," he continued, 
"except for trifling acts of disobedience 
such as that, I assure you, sir, that we 
behaved very well. Thus I remember 
some officers commanding sharp-shooters 
and some officers of light infantry, who 
had witnessed the Battles of the Marne 
and the Aisne. Well, when they came 
sometimes to chat with our officers, we 
used to hear them say, 'Our soldiers they 
were brave fellows enough, to be sure ! But 
to see your sailors fighting is an absolute 
eye-opener all the same.' " 

And that town of Dixmude, where they 
contrived to hold out for twenty-six days, 
became by degrees something like an ante- 
room of hell. There were rain, snow, 
floods, churning up black mud in the bot- 
tom of the trenches; blood splashing up 
everywhere; roofs falling in, crushing 
wounded in confused heaps or dead bodies 



76 WA R 

in all stages of decomposition; cries and 

death rat lies unceasing, minding with the 
continual crash of thunder close at hand. 
There was fighting in every street, In every 
house, through broken windows, behind 

fragments of walls — SUCh Close hand-to- 
hand fighting that sometimes men were 
locked together trying to strangle one an- 
other. And often at night, when already 
men could no longer tell where to strike 
home, there were bewildering acts of 

treachery committed by Germans, who 

WOUld suddenly begin to shont in French: 

"Cease tire, yon tools! It is OUT men 

who are there and yon are tiring on your 

own comrades." 

And men lost their heads entirely, as in 
a nightmare, from which they could 
neither rouse themselves nor escape. 

At last came the day when the town 

was taken. r rhe Germans suddenly 
brought up terrific reinforcements of 



WAR 77 

heavy artillery, and heavy sheila tell all 
round like bail -those enormous shells, the 
devil's own, which make boles six to eight 
yards wide by four yards deep. They 
came at the rate of fifty or sixty a, minute, 
and in the craters they made there was at 
once a jumbled mass of masonry, furni- 
ture, carpets, corpses, a, chaos of nameless 
horror.. To continue then; became truly 
a, task beyond human endurance; Lt would 

have meant a, massacre to the very last 
man, moreover without serving any useful 

purpose, tor the abandonment of that mass 
of ruins, of that charnel house, which was 
all that remained of the poor little Flem- 
ish town, was no Longer a, matter of impor- 
tance. It had resisted just the necessary 
length of time. The essential point was 
that the Germans had been prevented from 
crossing over to the other bank of the 
Yser, at a time when, nevertheless, all the 
chances had seemed in their favour; the 



78 WAR 

essentia] point was this especially, thai 

they would never at anv time cross over, 
now that reinforcements had arrived to 
hold them up in the south, and now that 
the floods were encroaching everywhere, 
barring the way in the north. On this 
side the barbarians' thrust was definitely 

countered. And it was our Naval Brigade, 

who almost by themselves, unwavering in 
the face of overwhelming numbers, had 
there supported our left wing, though los- 
ing half o\' their effective and eighty per 
cent, of their officers. 

Then they said io themselves, those who 
were left o\' them: 

"Our flag — we shall get it this time." 
Besides, officers in high command, 
touched and amazed at so much bravery, 
had promised it to them, and so had the 
head of the French Government himself, 
one day when he came to congratulate 
them. 



WAR 79 

But alas! they have not yet received it, 
and perhaps it will never be theirs, unless 
those officers in high command, to whom 
I have referred, who have partly pledged 
their word, intervene while there is yet 
time, before all these deeds of heroism have 
fallen into oblivion. 

For God's sake give them their flag, our 
Naval Brigade ! And even before sending 
it to them it would be well, methinks, to 
decorate it with the Cross. 

P. S. — Last week the Naval Brigade 
were mentioned at the head of the Army 
Orders of the day, for having given proof 
of the greatest energy and complete de- 
votion to duty in the defence of a strategic 
position of great importance. 



VIII 

TAHITI AND THE SAVAGES WITH 
PINK SKINS LIKE BOILED PIG 

November, 1914. 
After the lapse of so many years, and 
in the midst of those moods of rage and 
anguish or of splendid exaltation which 
characterise the present hour, I had quite 
forgotten the existence of a certain en- 
chanted isle, very far away, on the other 
side of the earth, in the midst of the great 
Southern Ocean, rearing among the warm 
clouds of those regions its mountains, car- 
peted with ferns and flowers. In our Oc- 
tober climate, already cold, here in this 
district of Paris, bare of leaves and in 
autumn colouring, where I have lived for 
a month, whence you have but to with- 
draw a little way to the north in order to 

80 



WAR 81 

hear the cannon crashing incessantly like 
a storm, and where each day countless 
graves are prepared for the burial of the 
most precious and cherished sons of 
France — here the name of Tahiti seems 
to me the designation of some visionary 
Eden. I can no longer bring myself to 
believe that my sojourn in former days 
in that far-away island was an actual fact. 
It is with an effort that I recall to my 
memory that sea, bordered with beaches 
of pure white coral, the palm trees with 
arching fronds, and the Maoris living in 
a perpetual dream, a childlike race with 
no thought beyond singing and garland- 
ing themselves with flowers. 

Tahiti, the island of which I had thought 
no more, has just been abruptly recalled 
to my mind by an article in a newspaper, 
in which it is stated that the Germans have 
passed that way, pillaging everything. 
And the commander of the two cruisers, 

6 



82 WAR 

who, without running any risk to them- 
selves, be it understood, committed this 
dastardly outrage on a poor little open 
town lying there all unsuspecting, cannot 
claim to have had any order issued to them 
from their horrible Emperor — no, indeed, 
since they were at the other end of the 
world. All by themselves they had found 
this thing to do, and of their own accord 
they did it, from sheer Teutonic savagery. 

Yesterday in one of the forts of Paris 
garrisoned by our sailors, I met an old 
naval petty officer who, in former days, 
had on two or three occasions sailed under 
my orders. He seems to me to have f oimd 
the name most appropriate to the Prus- 
sians and one that deserves to stick to 
them. 

"Well you see, Commander," he said to 
me, "you and I have often visited together 
all kinds of savages whom I should have 
thought the biggest brutes of all, savages 



WAR 83 

with black skins, with yellow skins, or with 
red skins, but I now see clearly that there 
is another sort still — those other dirty sav- 
ages with pink skins like boiled pig, who 
are much the worst of all." 

And so Tahiti the Delectable, where 
blood had never before been shed, a little 
Eden, harmless and confiding, set in the 
midst of mighty oceans — Tahiti has just 
suffered the visitation of savages with pink 
skins like boiled pig. So without profit, 
as without excuse, simply for the sport of 
the thing, for the pure German pleasure 
of wreaking as much evil as possible, never 
mind upon whom, never mind where, these 
savages, indeed "that worst kind of all," 
amused themselves by making a heap of 
ruins in that Bay of Papeete with its 
eternal calm, under trees ever green, 
among roses ever in flower. 

It is true this happened in the Antip- 
odes, and it is so trifling, so very trifling 



84 WAR 

a matter, compared with the smoking 
charnel-houses which in Belgium and 
France were landmarks in the track of the 
accursed army. But nevertheless it is es- 
pecially deserving of being brought up 
again as a still more peculiarly futile and 
fatuous act of ferocity. 



IX 
A LITTLE HUSSAR 

December, 1914. 

His name was Max Barthou. He was 
one of those dearly loved only sons whose 
death shatters two or three lives at least, 
and already we had too nearly forgotten 
all the skill and courage on his father's 
part to which we owed the Three Years' 
Service Bill, without which all France to- 
day would be prostrate under the heel of 
the Monster. 

To be sure he, young Max, had done no 
more than all those thousands of others 
who have given their lives so gloriously. 
It is not, then, on that account that I have 
chosen to speak of him in a special man- 
ner. No; one of my chief reasons, no 
doubt, is that his parents are very dear 

85 



86 WAR 

friends of mine. But it is also for the 
sake of the boy himself, for whom I had a 
great affection; moreover, I take a melan- 
choly pleasure in mentioning what a 
charming little fellow he was. In the first 
plaee he had contrived to remain a child, 
like boys of my own generation long ago, 
and this is very rare among young Par- 
isians of to-day, most of whom, although 
this sort of thing is now being brought 
under control, are at eighteen insufferable 
little wiseacres. To remain a child ! How 
much that implies, not freshness alone, but 
modesty, discernment, good sense, and 
elear judgment! Although he was very 
learned, almost beyond his years, he had 
contrived to remain simple, natural, de- 
voted to hearth and home, which he sel- 
dom left for more than a few hours in the 
day, when he went to attend his lectures. 
During my flying visits to Paris, when 
I chanced to be dining with his parents 



WAR 87 

on special days as their only guest, I used 
to talk to him in spite of the charming 
shyness he displayed, and each time I ap- 
preciated still more deeply his gentle, pro- 
found young soul. I can still see him after 
dinner in the familiar drawing-room, 
where he would linger with us for a mo- 
ment before going away to finish his stud- 
ies. On those occasions, unconventional 
though it may have been, he would lean 
against his mother's knee so as to be closer 
to her, or even lie on the rug at her feet, 
still playing the part of a coaxing child, 
teasing the while — oh, very gently, to be 
sure — an old Siamese cat which had been 
the companion of his earliest years and 
now growled at everyone except him. Good 
God, it was only yesterday! It was only 
last spring that this little hero, who has 
just fallen a victim to German shrapnel, 
would tumble about on the floor, playing 
with his friend, the old growling cat. 



88 WAR 

But what a transformation in those 
three months! It is scarcely a week since 
I met in a lobby at General Headquarters 
a smart and resolute blue hussar, who, 
after having saluted correctly, stood look- 
ing- ai me, Qot venturing to address me, but 
surprised that I did not speak to him. 
Ah! to be sure, it was young Max, whom, 
at Brsl sight, I had not recognised in his 
new kit — a young Max of eighteen, greatly 
changed by the magic wand oi' war, for 
he had suddenly grown into a man, and 
his eyes now shone with a sobered joy. At 
last he had obtained his heart's desire; 
to-morrow he was to set out for Alsace for 
the firing-line. 

"So you have got what you wanted, my 
young friend," I said to him. "Are you 
pleased V 9 

"Oh yes, I am pleased." 

That, to be sure, was clear from his 
appearance, and I bade him good-bye with 



WA R 80 

a smile, wishing him the luck to win that 
splendid medal, that most splendid of all 
medals, which is fastened with a yellow 
ribbon bordered with green. J bad indeed 
do foreboding that I had just shaken his 
hand for the last time. 

What insinuating perseverance he had 
brought to bear in order that he might 
get to the Front, tor his father, though 
to be Sure be would have made no attempt 
to keep him back, had a horror of* doing 

anything to force on his destiny, and only 

yielded step by step, glad of heart, yet 
at the same time in agony at seeing his 
boy's splendid spirit developing so 
rapidly. 

First of all he had to let him volunteer; 
then when the boy was chafing with im- 
patience in the depots where our sons are 
trained for the firing-line he had to obtain 
permission tor him to leave before his 
turn. The eommander-in-ehief, who had 



90 WAR 

welcomed him with pleasure, had wished 
to keep him by his side, but he protested, 
gently but firmly, on the occasion of a visit 
his father paid to the general head- 
quarters. 

"I feel too much sheltered here, which 
is absurd considering the name I bear. 
Ought I not, on the contrary, to set an 
example V 

And with a sudden return to that child- 
like gaiety which he had had the exquisite 
grace to preserve, hidden under his sol- 
dier's uniform, he added with the smile of 
old days : 

" Besides, papa, as the son of the Three 
Years' Service Bill, it is up to me to do 
at least three times as much of it as any- 
one else." 

His father, need I say, understood — 
understood with all his heart — understood 
so well that, divided between pride and 
distress, he asked immediately that the boy 
might be sent to Alsace. 



WAR 91 

And he had scarcely arrived yonder — 
at Thann, on the day of a bombardment — 
when a senseless volley of Germany shrap- 
nel, whence it came none knew, without 
any military usefulness, and simply for 
the pleasure of doing harm, shattered him 
like a thing of no account. He had no 
time to do " thrice as much as anyone else, ' ' 
alas no ! In less than a minute that young 
life, so precious, so tenderly cherished, was 
extinguished for ever. 

Four others, companions of his dream 
of glory, fell at his side, killed by the same 
shell, and the next day they were all com- 
mitted to the care of that earth of Alsace 
which had once more become French. 

And in his honour, poor little blue hus- 
sar, the people of Thann, who since yester- 
day were German no longer, desired of 
their own accord to make some special 
demonstration, because he was the son of 
the Three Years' Service Bill. These 



92 WAR 

Alsatians, released from bondage, had the 
fancy to adorn his coffin with gilding, 
simple but charming, as if for a little 
prince in a fairy-tale, and they carried him 
in their arms, him alone, while his com- 
panions were borne along behind him on 
a cart. 

After the service in the old church the 
whole assembly, at least three thousand in 
number, were warned that it would be ex- 
ceedingly dangerous to go any farther. As 
the cemetery was in an exposed position, 
spied upon by German binoculars, the long 
procession ran a great risk of attracting 
the barbarians' shrapnel fire, for it was 
unlikely that they would miss such an 
excellent opportunity of taking life. But 
no one was afraid, no one stayed behind, 
and the little hussar was escorted by them 
all to the very end. 

And there are thousands and thousands 
of our sons mown down in this manner — 



WAR 93 

sons from villages or castles, who were all 
the hope of, all that made life worth liv- 
ing for, mothers, fathers, grandfathers, 
and grandmothers. Night and day for eigh- 
teen years, twenty years, they had been 
surrounded with every care, brooded over 
with all tenderness. Anxious eyes had 
watched unremittingly their physical and 
moral growth. For some of them, of 
humbler families, heavy sacrifices had 
necessarily to be made and privations en- 
dured so that their health might be assured 
and their minds have scope to expand, to 
gain knowledge of the world, to be en- 
riched with beautiful impressions. And 
then, suddenly, there they are, these dear 
boys, prepared for life with such pains- 
taking love ; there they are, beloved young 
heroes, with shattered breast or brains 
blown out — by order of that damnable 
Jack-pudding who rules in Berlin. 

Oh, execrations and curses upon the 



94 WAR 

monster of ferocity and trickery who has 
unchained all this woe! May his life be 
greatly prolonged so that he may at least 
have time to suffer greatly; and after- 
wards may he still live on and remain fully 
conscious and lucid of intellect in the hour 
when he shall cross the threshold of eter- 
nity, where upon that door, which will 
never again be opened, may be read, flam- 
ing in the darkness, that sentence of utmost 
horror, "All hope abandon, ye who enter 
here." 



X 

AN EVENING AT YPRES 

"In anticipation of death I make this 
confession, that I despise the German na- 
tion on account of its infinite stupidity, 
and that I blush to belong to it." 

Schopenhauer. 

"The character of the Germans presents 
a terrible blend of ferocity and trickery. 
They are a people of born liars. One must 
see this to believe it." 

Velleius Paterculus, 
In the year 10 of the Christian era, 

March, 1915. 

Ruins in a mournful light which is 

anxious, seemingly, to fade away into a 

premature darkness. Vast ruins, ruins of 

such delicacy! Here is a deployment of 

95 



96 WAR 

those exquisite, slender colonnades and 
those archways of mysterious charm, 
which at first sight conjure up for the 
mind the Middle Ages and Gothic Art in 
its fair but transient blossoming. But in 
general, surviving specimens of that Art 
were only to be found in isolated examples, 
in the form of some old church or old 
cloister, surrounded by things of modern 
growth, whereas at Ypres, there is an en- 
senible; first a cathedral with additions of 
complicated supplementary buildings, that 
might be called palaces, whose long f agades 
with their clock-towers present to the eye 
their succession of windows with pointed 
arches. As an architectural group it is 
almost unique in the world, actually a 
whole quarter of a town, built in little 
columns, little arches and archaic stone 
tracery. 

The sky is low, gloomy, tormented, as 
in dreams. The actual night has not yet 



WAR 97 

begun to fall, but the thick clouds of north- 
ern winters cast upon the earth this kind 
of yellowish obscurity. Round about the 
lofty ruins, the open spaces are full of 
soldiers standing still, or slowly making 
their rounds, all with a certain air of seri- 
ousness, as if remembering or expecting 
some event, of which everyone is aware, 
but which no one discusses. There are 
also women poorly dressed, with anxious 
faces, and little children, but the humble 
population of civilians is merged in a 
crowd of rough uniforms, almost all of 
them faded and coated with earth, obvi- 
ously returned after prolonged engage- 
ments. The yellow khaki uniforms of the 
English and the almost black uniform of 
the Belgians mingle with the "horizon" 
blue of greatcoats worn by our French sol- 
diers, who are in a majority; all these dif- 
ferent shades blend into an almost neutral 
colour scheme, and two or three red bur- 

7 



98 k WAR 

nouses of Arab chiefs strike a vivid note, 
unexpected, disconcerting, in that crowd, 
coloured like the misty winter evening. 

Here are ruins indeed, but on closer in- 
spection, inexplicable ruins, for their col- 
lapse seems to date from yesterday, and 
the crevices and gaps are unnaturally 
white among the greyish tints of the fa- 
cades or towers, and here and there, 
through broken windows, on the interior 
walls is visible the glittering of gilding. 
Indeed it is not time that has wrought 
these ravages — time had spared these 
wonders — nor yet until our own days, even 
in the midst of the most terrible upheavals 
and most ruthless conquest, had men ever 
attempted to destroy them. No one had 
dared the deed until the coming of those 
savages, who are still there, close at hand, 
crouching in their holes of muddy earth, 
perfecting each day their idiotic work, and 
multiplying their volleys of scrap-iron, 



WAR 99 

wreaking their vengeance on these sacred 
objects whenever they are seized again by 
an access of rage in consequence of a new 
repulse. 

Near the mutilated cathedral, that pal- 
ace of a hundred windows, which in the 
main still stands, is the famous Cloth Hall, 
built when Flanders was at the height of 
her glory, a building vulgarised in all its 
aspects by reproductions, ever since the 
vindictiveness of the barbarians rendered 
it still more famous. One November night, 
it will be remembered, it blazed with sin- 
ister magnificence, side by side with the 
church and the precious buildings sur- 
rounding it, illuminating with a red light 
all the open country. The Germans had 
brought up in its honour the best that they 
could muster of incendiary material ; their 
benzine bombs consumed the Hall and then 
all that it contained ; all the treasures that 
had been preserved there for centuries, 



100 WAR 

us state-rooms, its wainscoting, its pict- 
ures, its books, all burned like straw. Now 
that it ts bereft of its lofty root' it has ac- 
quired something rather Venetian and sur- 
prising in its appearance, with its long 
faeades pierced with uninterrupted rows 
o( tloreated pointed aivhes. In the midst 
o( its irremediable disorder, it is strange 

and charming. The symmetrical turrets, 
slender as minarets, set in the angles of 
the walls, have hitherto escaped those in 
sensate bombs and rise up more boldly 
than ever, whereas the woodwork o( the 
pointed roofs no longer soars with them 
up into the air. But the belfry in the 
Centre, Which ever sinee the Middle Ages 
has kept watch over the plains, is to-day 
hatefully disfigured, its summit elean cut 
off, shattered, deft from top to bottom. It 
is scarcely in a condition to offer further 
resistance ; a few more shells, and it will 
collapse in one mass. On one of its sides, 



WAR 101 

very high up, still hangs the mouuiuental 
dial of a ruined clock, of which the hands 
point persistently to twenty-five minutes 
past four — doubtless the tragic moment 
at which this giant among Flemish belfries 
received its death blow. 

Around the great square of Ypres, where 
these glories of past ages had so long been 
preserved for us intact, several houses, 
the majority of them of ancient Flemish 
architecture, have been eviscerated in like 
manner, without object, without excuse, 
their interior visible from outside through 
great, gaping holes. But this the barbar- 
ians did not do on purpose; it was merely 
that they happened to be too near, these 
houses, too closely adjacent to the targets 
they had chosen, the cathedral and the old 
palace. It is known that everywhere here, 
as at Louvain, at Arras, at Soissons, at 
Rheims, their greatest delight is to direct 
their fire at public buildings, ruining again 



102 WAR 

and again all that is famous for beauty, 
art or memories. So then, except for its 
historic square, the town of Ypres has not 
suffered very greatly. Ah, but wait! I 
was forgetting the hospital yonder, which 
likewise served them for target; for the 
matter of that the Germans have notori- 
ously a preference for bombarding places 
of refuge, shelters for wounded and sick, 
ambulances, first-aid stations and Red 
Cross wagons. 

These acts of destruction, transforming 
into a rubbish heap that tranquil country 
of Belgium, which was above everything 
an incomparable museum, all are agreed 
to stigmatise as a base, ignoble crime. But 
it is more than that, it is a masterpiece 
of the crassest stupidity — the stupidity 
that Schopenhauer himself could not for- 
bear to publish in the frank outburst 
evoked by his last moments ; for after all 
it amounts to signing and initialling the 



WAR 103 

ignominy of Germany for the edification 
of neutrals and of generations to come. 
The bodies of men tortured and hanged, 
of women and children shot or mutilated, 
will soon moulder away completely in their 
poor, nameless graves, and then the world 
will remember them no more. But these 
imperishable ruins, these innumerable 
ruins of museums or churches, what over- 
whelming and damning evidence they are, 
and how everlasting ! 

After having done all this it is perhajJS 
still more foolish to deny it, to deny it in 
the very face of such incontrovertible evi- 
dence, to deny it with an effrontery that 
leaves us Frenchmen aghast, or even to in- 
vent pretexts at whose childish imbecility 
we can only shrug our shoulders. "A 
people of born liars," said the Latin 
writer. Yes, and a people who will never 
eradicate their original vices, a people who, 
moreover, actually dared, despite the most 



104 WAR 

irrefutable written documents, to deny the 
premeditation of their crimes and the 
treachery of their attack. What absurd 
childishness they reveal in their impos- 
tures! And who can be the simpletons 
whom they hope to deceive ? 

The light is still fading upon the deso- 
late ruins of Ypres, but how slowly to-day ! 
That is because even at noon the light was 
scarcely stronger on this dull day of 
March ; only at this hour a certain atmos- 
phere, indefinite and sad, broods upon the 
distant landscape, indicating the approach 
of night. 

They look instinctively at the ruins, 
these thousands of soldiers, taking their 
evening walk in such melancholy surround- 
ings, but generally they remain at a dis- 
tance, leaving the ruins to their magnifi- 
cent isolation. However, here are three of 
them, Frenchmen, probably new-comers, 
who approach the ruins hesitatingly. They 



WAR 105 

advance until they stand under the little 
arches of the tottering cathedral with a 
sober air, as if they were visiting tombs. 
After contemplating them at first in si- 
lence, one of them suddenly ejaculates a 
term of abuse (to whom it is addressed 
may be easily imagined!), doubtless the 
most insulting he can find in the French 
language, a word that I had not expected, 
which first makes me smile and then, the 
next moment, impresses me on the con- 
trary as a valuable discovery. 

' ' Oh those hooligans ! ' ' 

Here the intonation is missing, for I am 
unable to reproduce it, but in truth the 
compliment, pronounced as he pronounced 
it, seems to me something new, worth add- 
ing to all the other epithets applied to 
Germans, which are always pitched in too 
low a key and moreover too refined ; and 
he continues to repeat, indignant little sol- 
dier that he is, stamping with rage : 



106 WAR 

"Oh those hooligans among hooligans!" 
At last the fall of night is upon us, the 
true night, which will put an end here 
to all signs of life. The crowd of soldiers 
gradually melts away along streets already 
dark, which, for obvious reasons, will not 
be lighted. In the distance the sound of 
the bugle summons them to their evening 
soup in houses or barracks, where they 
will fall asleep with no sense of security, 
certain of being awakened at any moment 
by shells, or by those great monsters that 
explode with a crash like thunder. Poor, 
brave children of France, wrapped in their 
bluish overcoats, none can foresee at what 
hour death will be hurled at them, from 
afar, blindly, through the misty darkness 
— for the most playful fancy presides over 
this bombardment; now it is an endless 
rain of fire, now only a single shell which 
comes and kills at haphazard. And pa- 
tiently awaiting the rest of the great drama 



WAR 107 

lie the ruins, enveloped in silence. Here and 
there a little timid light appears in some 
house still inhabited, where the windows 
are pasted over with paper to enable them 
to resist the shock of explosions close at 
hand, and where the air-holes of the cel- 
lars of refuge are protected by sandbags. 
Who would believe it ? Stubborn people, 
people too old or too poor to flee, have re- 
mained at Ypres, and others even are be- 
ginning to return, with a kind of fatalistic 
resignation. 

The cathedral and the great belfry pro- 
ject only their silhouettes against the sky, 
and these seem to have been congealed, 
gesturing with broken arms. As the night 
enfolds the world more completely in its 
thick mists, memory conjures up the 
mournful surroundings in which Ypres is 
now lost, deep plains unpeopled and soon 
plunged in darkness, roads broken up, im- 
passable for fugitives, fields blotted out or 



108 WAR 

mantled with snow, a network of trenches 
where our soldiers, alas ! are suffering cold 
and discomfort, and so near, hardly a can- 
non-shot away, those other ditches, more 
grim, more sordid, where men of ineradi- 
cable savagery are watching, always ready 
to spring out in solid masses, uttering Red 
Indian war whoops, or to crawl sneak- 
ingly along to squirt liquid fire upon our 
soldiers. 

But how the twilight has lengthened in 
these last few days! Without looking at 
the clock it is evident that the hour is late, 
and the mere fact of still being able to 
see conveys in spite of all a vague presage 
of April; it seems that the nightmare of 
winter is coming to an end, that the sun 
will reappear, the sun of deliverance, that 
softer breezes, as if nothing unusual were 
happening in the world, will bring back 
flowers and songs of birds to all these 
scenes of desolation, among all these thou- 



WAR 109 

sands of graves of youth. There is yet 
another sign of spring, three or four little 
girls, who rush out into the deserted square 
in wild spirits, quite little girls, not more 
than six years old ; they have escaped, fleet 
of foot, from the cellar in which they sleep, 
and they take hands and try to dance a 
round, as on an evening in May, to the 
tune of an old Flemish song. But another 
child, a big girl of ten, a person in author- 
ity, comes along and reduces them to si- 
lence, scolding them as if they had done 
something naughty, and drives them back 
to the underground dwellings, where, after 
they have said their prayers, lowly mothers 
will put them to bed. 

Unspeakably sad seemed that childish 
round, tentatively danced there in solitude 
at the fall of a cold March night, in a 
square dominated by a phantom belfry, in 
a martyred city, in the midst of gloomy, 



110 WAB 

inundated plains, all in darkness, and all 
beset with ambushes and mourning. 

Since this chapter was written the bom- 
bardment has continued, and Ypres is now 

no more than a shapeless mass of ealemed 
stones. 



XI 

AT THE GENERAL HEADQUAR- 
TERS OF THE BELGIAN ARMY 

March, 1915. 

To-day on iny way to the General Head- 
quarters of the Belgian Army, whither I 
am bound on a mission from the Presi- 
dent of the French Republic to His Maj- 
esty King Albert, I pass through Fumes, 
another town wantonly and savagely bom- 
barded, where at this hour of the day there 
is a raging storm of icy wind, snow, rain, 
and hail, under a black sky. 

Here as at Ypres the barbarians bent 
their whole soul on the destruction of the 
historical part, the charming old town hall 
and its surroundings. It is here that King 
Albert, driven forth from his palace, es- 
tablished himself at first. Thereupon the 
Germans, with that delicacy of feeling to 

in 



112 AVAR 

which at present no one in the world dis- 
putes their claim, immediately made this 
place their objective, in order to bombard 
it with their brutal, heavy shells. I need 
hardly say that there was scarcely anyone 
in the streets, where I slowed down my 
motor so that I might have leisure for a 
better appreciation of the effects of the 
Kaiser's "work of civilisation"; there 
were only some groups of soldiers, fully 
armed, some with their coat-collars turned 
up, others with the back curtains of their 
service-caps turned down. They hastened 
along in the squalls, running like children, 
and laughing good-hmnouredly, as if it 
were very amusing, this downpour, which 
for once was not of lire. 

How is it that there is no atmosphere of 
sadness about this half-empty town? It 
is as if the gaiety of these soldiers, in spite 
of the gloomy weather, had communicated 
itself to the ruined surroundings. And 



WAR 113 

how full of splendid health and spirits 
they seem! I see no more on any faces 
that somewhat startled, haggard expres- 
sion, common at the beginning of the war. 
The outdoor life, combined with good food, 
has bronzed the cheeks of these men whom 
the shrapnel has spared, but their prin- 
cipal support and stay is their complete 
confidence, their conviction that they have 
already gained the upper hand and are 
marching to victory. The invasion of the 
Bodies will pass away like this horrible 
weather, which after all is only a last 
shower of March; it will all come to an 
end. 

At a turning, during a lull in the storm, 
I come very unexpectedly upon a little knot 
of French sailors. I cannot refrain from 
beckoning to them, as one would beckon to 
children whom one had suddenly found 
again in some distant jungle, and they 
come running to the door of my car equally 

8 



114 WAR 

delighted to see someone in naval uniform. 
They seem to be picked men: they have 
such gallant, comely faces and such frank, 
spirited eyes. Other sailors, too, who were 
passing by at a little distance and whom 
1 had not called, come likewise and sur- 
round me as if it were the natural thing 
to do, but with respectful familiarity, for 
are we not in a strange country, and at 
war ! Only yesterday, they tell me, they 
arrived a whole battalion strong, with 
their officers, and they are camping in a 
neighbouring village while waiting to 
"down" the Roches. And 1 should like so 
much to make a detour and pay them a 
visit in their own camp if I were not 
pressed for time, tied down to the hour of 
my audience with His Majesty. Indeed 
it gives me pleasure to associate with our 
soldiers, but it is a still greater delight to 
associate with our sailors, among whom I 
passed forty years of my life. Even be- 



WAR 115 

fore I caught sight of them, just from hear- 
ing them talk, I could recoguise them for 
what they were. More than once, on our 
military thoroughfares in the north, on a 
pitch-dark night, when it was one of their 
detachments who stopped me to demand 
the password, I have recognised them 
simply by the sound of their voices. 

One of our generals, army commander 
on ihe Northern Front, was speaking to 
me yesterday of that pleasant, kindly fa- 
miliarity which prevails from the highest 
to the lowest grade of the military ladder, 
and which is a new tone characteristic of 
this essentially national war in which we 
all march hand in hand. 

"In the trenches,' ' he said to me, "if I 
stop to talk to a soldier, other soldiers 
gather round me so that I may talk to 
them too. And they are becoming more 
and more admirable for their high spirits 
and their brotherliness. If onlv our thou- 



116 WAR 

sands of dead could be restored to us what 
a benefit this war would have bestowed 
upon us, drawing us near together, until 
we all possess but one heart.' ' 

It is a long way to the General Head- 
quarters. Out in the open country the 
weather is appalling beyond description. 
The roads are broken up, fields flooded 
until they resemble marshes, and some- 
times there are trenches, elicvau.v de frise, 
reminding the traveller that the barbar- 
ians are still very near. And yet all this, 
which ought to be depressing, no longer 
succeeds in being so. Every meeting with 
soldiers — and the car passes them every 
minute — is sufficient to restore your se- 
renity. They have all the same cheerful 
faces, expressive of courage and gaiety. 
Even the poor sappers, up to their knees 
in water, working hard to repair the shel- 
ter pits and defences, have an expression 
of gaiety under their dripping service- 



WAR 117 

caps. What numbers of soldiers there are 
in the smallest villages, Belgian and 
French, very fraternally intermingling. 
By what wonderful organisation of the 
commissariat are these men housed and 
fed? 

But who asserted that there were no 
Belgian soldiers left ? On the contrary, I 
pass imposing detachments on their way 
to the front, in good order, admirably 
equipped, and of line bearing, with a con- 
voy of excellent artillery of the very latest 
pattern. Never can enough be said in 
praise of the heroism of a people who had 
every reason for not preparing themselves 
for war, since they were under the pro- 
tection of solemn treaties that should have 
preserved them forever from any such 
necessity, yet who, nevertheless, sustained 
and checked the brunt of the attack of the 
great barbarism. Disabled at first and 
almost annihilated, yet they are recover- 



118 WAR 

ing themselves and gathering around their 
sublimely heroic king. 

It is raining, raining, and we are numb 
with cold, but we have arrived at last, and 
in another moment I shall see him, the 
King, without reproach and without fear. 
Were it not for these troops and all these 
service motor cars, it would be impossible 
to believe that this remote village was the 
General Headquarters. I have to leave 
the car, for the road which leads to the 
royal residence is nothing more than a 
footpath. Among the rough motor cars 
standing there, all stained with mud from 
the roads, there is one car of superior de- 
sign, having no armorial bearings of any 
kind, nothing but two letters traced in 
chalk on the black door, S.M. (Sa Ma- 
jest 6), for this is his car. In this charm- 
ing corner of ancient Flanders, in an old 
abbey, surrounded by trees and tombs, here 
is his dwelling. Out in the rain, on the 



WAR 119 

path which borders on the little sacred 
cemetery, an aide-de-camp comes to meet 
me, a man with the charm and simplicity 
that no doubt likewise characterise his sov- 
ereign. There are no guards at the en- 
trance to the dwelling, and no ceremony 
is observed. At the end of an unimposing 
corridor where I have just time to remove 
my overcoat, in the embrasure of an open- 
ing door, the King appears, erect, tall, 
slender, with regular features and a sur- 
prising air of youth, with frank eyes, 
gentle and noble in expression, stretching 
out his hand in kindly welcome. 

In the course of my life other kings and 
emperors have been gracious enough to re- 
ceive me, but in spite of pomp, in spite of 
the splendour of some of their palaces, 
I have never yet felt such reverence for 
sovereign majesty as here, on the thresh- 
old of this little house, where it is infinitely 
exalted by calamity and self-sacrifice ; and 



120 WAR 

when I express this sentiment to King 
Albert he replies with a smile, "Oh, as 
for my palace," and he completes his 
phrase with a negligent wave of the hand, 
indicating his humble surroundings. It is 
indeed a simple room that I have just 
entered, yet by the mere absence of all 
vulgarity, still possessing distinction. A 
bookcase crowded with books occupies the 
whole of one wall ; in the background there 
is an open piano with a music-book on the 
stand ; in the middle a large table, covered 
with maps and strategic plans; and the 
window, open in spite of the cold, looks 
out on to a little old-world garden, like that 
of a parish priest, almost completely en- 
closed, stripped of its leaves, melancholy, 
weeping, as it were, the rains of winter. 
After I have executed the simple mission 
entrusted to me by the President of the 
Republic, the King graciously detains me 
a long time in conversation. But if I felt 



WAR 121 

reluctant to write even the beginning of 
these notes, still more do I hesitate to 
touch upon this interview, even with the 
utmost discretion, and then how colour- 
less will it seem, all that I shall venture 
to say ! It is because in truth I know that 
he never ceases to enjoin upon those 
around him, " Above all, see that people 
do not talk about me," because I know 
and understand so well the horror he pro- 
fesses for anything resembling an " inter- 
view.' ' So then at first I made up my 
mind to be silent, and yet when there is 
an opportunity of making himself heard, 
who would not long to help to spread 
abroad, to the utmost of his small ability, 
the renown of such a name? 

Very striking in the first place is the 
sincere and exquisite modesty of his heroic 
nature ; it is almost as if he were unaware 
that he is worthy of admiration. In his 
opinion he has less deserved the venera- 



122 WAR 

tion which France has devoted to him, and 
his popularity among us, than the least of 
his soldiers, slain for our common defence. 
When I tell him that I have seen even in 
the depths of the country, in peasants' 
cottages, the portraits of the King and 
Queen of the Belgians in the place of 
honour, with little flags, black, yellow and 
red, piously pinned around them, he ap- 
pears scarcely to believe me ; his smile and 
his silence seem to answer: 

"Yet all that I did was so natural. 
Could a king worthy of the name have 
acted in any other way?" 

Now we talk about the Dardanelles, 
where in this hour serious issues hang in 
the balance; he is pleased to question me 
about ambushes in those parts, which I 
frequented for so long a time, and which 
have not ceased to be very dear to me. 
But suddenly a colder gust blows in 
through the window, still opening on to 



WAR 123 

the forlorn little garden. With what 
kindly thoughtfulness, then, he rises, as 
any ordinary officer might have done, and 
himself closes the window near which I 
am seated. 

And then we talk of war, of rifles, of 
artillery. His Majesty is well posted in 
everything, like a general already broken 
in to his craft. 

Strange destiny for a prince, who, in 
the beginning, did not seem designated for 
the throne, and who, perhaps, would have 
preferred to go on living his former some- 
what retired life by the side of his beloved 
princess. Then, when the unlooked-for 
crown was placed upon his youthful brow, 
he might well have believed that he could 
hope for an era of profound peace, in the 
midst of the most peaceful of all nations, 
but, contrary to every expectation, he has 
known the most appallingly tragic reign 
of all. Between one dav and the next, 



124 WAR 

without a moment's weakness, without 
even a moment's hesitation, disdainful of 
compromises, which for a time, at least, 
though to the detriment of the civilisation 
of the world, might have preserved for a 
little space his towns and palaces, he stood 
erect in the way of the Monster's onrush, 
a great warrior king in the midst of an 
army of heroes. 

To-day it is clear that he has no longer 
a doubt of victor}', and his own loyalty 
gives him complete confidence in the loy- 
alty of the Allies, who truly desire to re- 
store life to his country of Belgium; nev- 
ertheless, he insists that his soldiers shall 
co-operate with all their remaining 
strength in the work of deliverance, and 
that they shall remain to the end at the 
post of danger and honour. Let us salute 
him with the profoundest reverence. 

Another less noble, might have said to 
himself: 



WAR 125 

"I have amply paid my debt to the com- 
mon cause; it was my troops who built 
the first rampart against barbarism. My 
country, the first to be trampled under the 
feet of these German brutes, is no more 
than a heap of ruins. That suffices.' ' 

But no, he will have the name of Belgium 
inscribed upon a yet prouder page, by the 
side of Serbia, in the golden book of 
history. 

And that is the reason why I met on my 
way those inestimable troops, alert and 
fresh, miraculously revived, who were on 
their way to the front to continue the holy 
struggle. 

Before him let us bow down to the very 
ground. 

Night is falling when the audience comes 
to an end and I find myself again on the 
footpath that leads to the abbey. On my 
return journey, along those roads broken 
up by rain and by military transport 



126 WAR 

wagons, I remain under the charm of his 
welcome. And I compare these two mon- 
archs, situated, as it were, at opposite poles 
of humanity, the one at the pole of light, 
the other at the pole of darkness ; the one 
yonder, swollen with hypocrisy and arro- 
gance, a monster among monsters, his 
hands full of blood, his nails full of torn 
flesh, who still dares to surround himself 
with insolent pomp; the other here, ban- 
ished without a murmur to a little house 
in a village, standing on a last strip of his 
martyred kingdom, but in whose honour 
rises from the whole civilised earth a con- 
cert of sympathy, enthusiasm, magnificent 
appreciation, and for whom are stored up 
crowns of most pure and immortal glory. 



XII 

SOME WORDS UTTERED BY HER 
MAJESTY, THE QUEEN OP THE 
BELGIANS 

"All the world knows what value to 
attach to the King of Prussia and his 
word. There is no sovereign in Europe 
who has not suffered from his perfidy. 
And such a king as this would impose him- 
self upon Germany as dictator and pro- 
tector ! Under a despotism which repudi- 
ates every principle, the Prussian mon- 
archy will one day be the source of infinite 
calamity, not only to Germany, but like- 
wise to the whole of Europe." 

The Empress Maria Theresa. 

March, 1915. 
Far away, far away and out of the world 
seems this place where the persecuted 
Queen has taken refuge. I do not know 

127 



128 WAB 

how lone my motor car, its windows lashed 
by rain, has rolled along in the dun light 
caused by showers and approaching night, 

when at last the Belgian non-eonunissioned 
officer, who guided my chauffeur along 
these unt'aimliar roads, announces that we 
have arrived. Her Majesty, Queen Eliza- 

. of the Belgians, has deigned to grant 
me an audience at halt-past six, and I 
trembled lest 1 should be late, for the way 
seemed interminable through a country- 
side which it was too dark to see; but we 
were in time, punctual to a moment. At 
halt-past six on an evening in Mareh, 
under an oveivast sky, a is already dark 
as night. 

The ear stops and I jump out on to the 

is of the seas • . 1 recognise the 
sound of the ocean elose at hand, and the 
boundless expanse of the North Sea, less 
dark than the sky, IS vaguely perceptible 
to the sight. Rain and cold winds rage 
around us. On the dunes two or three 



AVAR V29 

houses without lights in the windows are 
visible as greyish out linos. However, 
someone carrying a little shining glass 
lamp is hurrying to receive me; he is an 

officer in tier .Majesty's service, carrying 
one of those electric torches whieh the 
wind does not blow out, and whieh in 
France we call an Apache's lantern. 

On entering the first house to whieh the 
aide-de-camp conducts me, I attempt to 
leave my overcoat in the hall. 

"No, no/' he says, "keep it on; we have 
still to go out of doors to reach Her Ma- 
jesty's apartments." 

This rirst villa shelters only ladies-in- 
waiting and officers of that court now so 
shorn of ceremony, and every evening it 
is plunged purposely in darkness as a pre- 
eaution against shrapnel tire. A moment 
later I am summoned to Her Majesty's 
presence. Escorted by the same pleasant 
officer with his lantern, T hurry aeross to 

9 



130 WAB 

the next house. The rain is mingled with 
white butterflies, which are flakes of snow. 

Very indistinctly I see a desert-like land- 
scape of dimes and sands almost white, 
stretching out into infinity. 

"Would you not imagine it a site in the 
Sahara ? n says my guide. "When your 
Arab cavalry came here the illusion was 
complete." 

It is true, for even in Africa the sands 
turn pale in the darkness, but this is a Sa- 
hara transported under the gloomy sky of 
a northern night, and it has assumed there 
too deep a melancholy. 

In the villa we enter a warm, well- 
lighted room, which, with its red furnish- 
ings, introduces a note of gaiety, almost 
o\' comfort, into this quasi-solitude. bat- 
tered by wintry squalls. And there is a 
pleasure, which at first transcends every- 
thing else — the physical pleasure of ap- 
proaching a fireplace with a good blazing 
tire. 



WAR 131 

While waiting for the Queen I notice a 
long packing-case lying on two chairs ; it 
is made of that fine, unequalled, white car- 
pentry which immediately reminds me of 
Nagasaki, and on it are painted Japanese 
letters in columns. The officer's glance fol- 
lowed mine. 

"That," he says, "is a magnificent an- 
cient sabre which the Japanese have just 
sent to our King." 

I, personally, had forgotten them, those 
distant allies of ours in the Farthest East. 
Yet it is true that they are on our side; 
how strange a thing ! And even over there 
the woes of these two gracious sovereigns 
are universally known, and the Japanese 
desired to show their special sympathy by 
sending them a valuable present. 

I think this charming officer was going 
to show me the sabre from Japan, but a 
lady-in-waiting appears, announcing Her 
Majesty, and he withdraws at once. 



132 WAR 

' ' Her Ma j esty is coming, ' ' says the lady- 
in-waiting. 

The Queen, whom I have never yet seen, 
consecrated as it were by suffering, with 
what infinite reverence I await her com- 
ing, standing there in front of the fire 
while wind and snow continue to rage in 
the black night outside. Through which 
door will she enter? Doubtless by that 
door over there at the end of the room, 
on which my attention is involuntarily 
concentrated. 

But no! A soft, rustling soimd makes 
me turn my head towards the opposite 
side of the room, and from behind a screen 
of red silk which concealed another door 
the young Queen appears, so near to me 
that I have not room to make my court 
bow. My first impression, necessarily fur- 
tive as a flash of lightning, a mere visual 
impression, I might say a colourist's im- 
pression, is a dazzling little vision of blue 
— the blue of her gown, but more espe- 



WAR 133 

cially the blue of her eyes, which shine like 
two luminous stars. And then she has 
such an air of youth ; she seems this even- 
ing twenty-four, and scarcely that. From 
the different portraits I had seen of Her 
Majesty, portraits so little faithful to life, 
I had gathered that she was very tall, with 
a profile almost too long, but on the con- 
trary, she is of medium height, and her 
face is small, with exquisitely refined fea- 
tures — a face almost ethereal, so delicate 
that it almost vanishes, eclipsed by those 
marvellous, limpid eyes, like two pure 
turquoises, transparent to reveal the light 
within. Even a man unaware of her rank 
and of everything concerning her, her de- 
votion to duty, the superlative dignity of 
her actions, her serene resignation, her ad- 
mirable, simple charity, would say to him- 
self at first sight : 

"The woman with those eyes, who may 
she be? Assuredly one who soars very 



134 WAR 

high and will never falter, who without 
even a tremor of her eyelids can look in 
the face not only temptations, but likewise 
danger and death." 

With what reverent sympathy, free from 
vulgar curiosity, would I fain catch an 
echo of that which stirs in the depths of 
her heart when she contemplates the drama 
of her destiny. But a conversation with 
a queen is not directed by one s own fancy, 
and at the beginning of the audience Her 
Majesty touches upon different subjects 
lightly and gracefully as if there were 
nothing unusual happening in the world. 
We talk of the East, where we have both 
travelled; we talk of books she has read; 
it seems as if we were oblivious of the 
great tragedy which is being enacted, 
oblivious of the surrounding country, 
strewn with ruins and the dead. Soon, 
however, perhaps because a little bond of 
confidence has established itself between 



WAR 135 

us, Her Majesty speaks to me of the de- 
struction of Ypres, Furnes, towns from 
which I have just come ; then the two blue 
stars gazing at me seem to me to grow a 
little misty, in spite of an effort to keep 
them clear. 

"But, madam, " I say, "there still re- 
mains standing enough of the walls to 
enable all the outlines to be traced again, 
and almost everything to be practically 
reconstructed in the better times that are 
in store." 

1 i Ah, ' ' she answers, ' ' rebuild ! Certainly 
it will be possible to rebuild, but it will 
never be more than an imitation, and for 
me something essential will always be 
lacking. I shall miss the soul which has 
passed away." 

Then I see how dearly Her Majesty had 
already loved those marvels now ruined, 
and all the past of her adopted country, 
which survived there in the old stone 
tracery of Flanders. 



136 WA"R 

Ypres and Fumes incline us to sub- 
jects less impersonal, and gradually we at 
last come to talk of Germany. One of the 
sentiments predominant, it seems, in her 
bruised heart is that of amazement, the 
most painful as well as the most complete 
amazement, at so many crimes. 

"There has been some change in them/' 
she says, in hesitating- words. "They used 
not to be like this. The Crown Prince, 
whom I knew very well in my childhood, 
was gentle, and nothing in him led one to 

expect Think of it as I may, day and 

night, I cannot understand No, in 

the old days they were not like this, o( 
that I am sure." 

But I know very well that they were 
ever thus (as indeed all of us know") ; they 
were always the same from the beginning 
under their inscrutable hypocrisy. But 
how could I venture to contradict this 
Queen, born among them, like a beautiful. 



WAR 137 

rare flower among stinging nettles and 
brambles? To be sure, the unleashing of 
their latent barbarism which we are now 
witnessing is the work of that King of 
Prussia who is the faithful successor of 
him whom formerly the great Empress 
Maria Theresa stigmatised; it is he in- 
deed, who, to use the bitter yet very just 
American expression, has given them 
swelled heads. But their character was 
ever the same in all ages, and in order to 
form a judgment of their souls, steeped in 
lies, murders, and rapine, it is sufficient 
to read their writers, their thinkers, whose 
cynicism leaves us aghast. 

After a moment's pause in which noth- 
ing is heard but the noise of the wind out- 
side, remembering that the young mar- 
tyred Queen was a Bavarian princess, I 
venture to recall the fact that the Bavar- 
ians in the Germany Army were troubled 
at the persecutions endured by the Queen 



138 WAR 

of the Belgians, who had sprung from their 
own race, and indignant when the Mon- 
ster who leads this Witches 1 Sabbath even 
tried to single out her children as a mark 
for his shrapnel lire. 

But the Queen, raising her little hand 
from where it rested on the silken texture 
of her gown, outlines a gesture which sig- 
nifies something inexorably final, and in 
a grave, low voice she utters this phrase 
which falls upon the silence with the so- 
lemnity of a sentence whence there is no 
appeal : 

"It is at an end. Between them and me 
has fallen a curtain of iron which will 
never again be lifted. " 

At the same time, at the remembrance 
of her childhood, doubtless, and of those 
whom she loved over there, the two clear 
blue eyes which were looking at me grow 
very misty, and I turn my head aw r ay so 
that I may not seem to have noticed. 



XIII 

AN APPEAL ON BEHALF OF THE 
SERIOUSLY WOUNDED IN THE 
EAST 

June, 1915. 
The Orient, the Dardanelles, the Sea of 
Marmora — the mere enunciation of these 
words, especially in these beautiful 
months of summer, conjures up images of 
sun-steeped repose, a repose perhaps a 
little mournful because of the lack of all 
movement in those parts, but a repose of 
such adorable melancholy, in the midst of 
so many remembrances of great past des- 
tinies of humanity, which, throughout 
these regions, slumber, preserved under 
the mantle of Islam. But lately on this 
peninsula of Gallipoli, with its somewhat 
bare and stony hills, there used to be, in 
the winding folds of every river, tranquil 
old villages, with their wooden houses built 

139 



140 WAR 

on the site of ancient ruins, their white 
minarets, their dark cypress groves, shel- 
tering some of those charming gilded 
stelae, which exist in countless numbers, 
as everyone knows, in that land of Turkey 
where the dead are never disturbed. And 
it was all so calm, all this ; it seemed that 
these humble little Edens might have felt 
sure of being spared for a long time yet, 
if not for ever. 

But alas ! the Germans are the cause of 
the horror that is unchained here to-day, 
that horror without precedent, which it is 
their genius to propagate as soon as they 
have chosen a spot wherein to stretch out 
their tentacles, visible or concealed. And 
it has become a most sinister chaos, lighted 
by huge flames, red or livid, in a continu- 
ous din of hell. Everything is overthrown 
in confusion and ruin. 

1 ' The ancient castles of Europe and Asia 
are nothing more than ruins," writes to 



WAR 141 

me one of our old Zouaves, who is fighting 
in those parts; "it is to me unspeakably 
painful to see those idyllic landscapes har- 
rowed by trenches and shells; the vener- 
able cypress trees are mown down ; fune- 
real marbles of great artistic value are 
shattered into a thousand fragments. If 
only Stamboul at least may be preserved !" 

There are trenches, trenches every- 
where. To this form of warfare, under- 
ground and treacherous, which the Ger- 
mans have invented, the Turks, like our- 
selves, have necessarily had to submit. 
And so this ancient soil, the repository of 
the treasures of antiquity, has been 
ploughed up into deep furrows, in which 
appear at every moment the fragments of 
some marvel dating from distant, unknown 
epochs. 

And at every hour of the night and day 
these trenches are reddened with blood, 
with the blood of our sons of Prance, of 



142 WAR 

our English friends, and even of those 
gentle giants of New Zealand, who have 
followed them into this furnace. The 
earth is abundantly drenched with their 
blood, the blood of all these Allies, so dis- 
similar, but so firmly united against the 
monstrous knavery of Germany. Oppo- 
site, very close, there flows the blood of 
those Turks, who are nothing but the un- 
happy victims of hateful plots, yet who 
are so freely insulted in France by people 
who understand nothing of the underlying 
cause. They fall in thousands, these 
Turks, more exposed to shrapnel fire than 
our own men; nevertheless they fight re- 
luctantly; they fight because they have 
been deceived and because insolent for- 
eigners drive them on with their revolvers. 
If on the whole they fight none the less 
superbly, it is merely a question of race. 
And the simplest of them, who have been 
persuaded that they had to do with only 



WAR 143 

their Russian enemies, are unaware that 
it is we who are there. 

On this peninsula we occupy a position 
won and retained by force of heroism. 
The formation of the ground continues to 
render our situation one of difficulty and 
our tenacity still more worthy of admira- 
tion. Our position, indeed, is dominated 
by the low hills of Asia, where the forts 
have not yet all been silenced; there is 
therefore no nook or corner, no tent, no 
single one of our field hospitals, where 
doctors can attend to the wounded in per- 
fect security, absolutely certain that no 
shell will come and interrupt them. 

This terrible void France desires to fill 
with all possible dispatch. With the ut- 
most haste, she is fitting out a great hos- 
pital ship, which the Red Cross Society 
has offered to provide at its own expense 
with three hundred beds, with linen, 
nurses, drugs and dressings. This life- 



144 WAR 

saving ship will be moored in front of an 
island close to the scene of battle, but 
completely sheltered; steam and motor 
launches will be attached to it to fetch 
those who are seriously wounded and 
bring them on board day by day, so that 
they may be operated upon and tended in 
peace before infection and gangrene set 
in. How many precious lives of our sol- 
diers will thus be saved! 

It must be understood that the stretcher- 
bearers of the ship will bring back like- 
wise wounded Turks, if there are any 
lying in the zone accessible to them; and 
this is only fair give and take, for they 
do the same for us. Some Zouaves who 
are fighting there wrote to me yesterday : 

"The Turks are resisting with un- 
equalled bravery ; this all the newspapers 
of Europe admit. But our wounded and 
our prisoners receive excellent treatment 
from them, as General Gouraud himself 



WAR 145 

announced in an Order of the Day; they 
nurse them, feed them, and tend them bet- 
ter than their own soldiers." 

And here is a literal extract from a let- 
ter from one of our adjutants: "I fell, 
wounded in the leg, beside a Turkish offi- 
cer more seriously wounded than myself ; 
he had with him emergency dressings and 
he began by dressing my wound before 
thinking of his own. He spoke French 
very well and he said to me, 'You see, my 
friend, to what a pass these miserable 
Germans have brought us!' " 

If I dwell upon the subject of the Turks 
it is not, I need hardly say, because I take 
a deeper interest in them than in our own 
men ; no one will insult me by such a re- 
flection. No. But as for our own soldiers, 
does not everyone love them already? 
Whereas these poor fellows are really too 
much misjudged and slandered by the ig- 
norant masses. 
10 



146 WAR 

44 Spare tliein as soon as they hold up 
their hands/' said a heroic general, 
brought home yesterday from the Dar- 
danelles covered with woimds. He was 
addressing his men in a proclamation ad- 
mirable for the loyalty of its tone. "Spare 
them/' he said; "it is not they who are 
our enemies." 

So, then, the great life-saving ship which 
is about to be sent to those parts is being 
made ready to sail in all haste. But the 
Red Cross Society have herewith taken 
upon themselves a heavy responsibility, 
and it will be readily understood that they 
will need money, much money. That is 
why I make this appeal on their behalf to 
all the world. So much has already been 
given that it is an earnest wish that still 
more will be forthcoming, for with us 
charity is inexhaustible when once the 
noble impulse stirs. I would ask that help 
may be given very soon, for there is need 
of dispatch. 



WAR 147 

How greatly this will change the con- 
dition of life for our dear soldiers. What 
confidence it will give them to know that 
if they fall, seriously wounded, there is 
waiting for them a place of refuge, like a 
little corner of France, which is equivalent 
to saying a corner of Paradise, and that 
they will be taken there at once. Instead 
of the miserable makeshift field hospital, 
too hot and by no means too safe, where 
the terrible noise never ceases to rack ach- 
ing temples, there will be this refuge, ab- 
solutely out of range of gun fire, this great 
peaceful ship, open everywhere to the 
good, wholesome air of the sea, where at 
last prevails that silence so passionately 
desired by sufferers, where they will be 
tended with all the latest improvements 
and the most ingenious inventions by 
gentle French nurses in white dresses, 
whose noiseless footfall disturbs no 
slumber nor dream. 



XIV 

SERBIA IN THE BALKAN WAR 

July, 1915. 

But lately I had included Serbia — its 
prince in particular — in my first accusa- 
tions against the Balkan races, when they 
hurled themselves together upon Turkey, 
already at grips with Italy. But later on, 
in the course of so many wrathful indict- 
ments, I did not once again mention the 
name of the Serbians. That was because 
my information from those parts proved 
to me clearly that among the original 
Allies, the Allies of the Balkans, the Ser- 
bians were the most humane. They them- 
selves, doubtless, observed that I made no 
further reference to them, for no insult- 
ing letter reached me from their country, 
whereas Bulgarians and even Greeks 
poured upon me a flood of unseemly abuse. 

148 



WAR 149 

Since then the great philanthropist, 
Carnegie, in order to establish the truth 
definitely in history, has set on foot a con- 
scientious international court of inquiry, 
whose findings, published in a large 
volume, have all the authority of the most 
impartial official documents. Here are 
recorded, supported by proofs and signa- 
tures, the most appalling testimonies 
against Bulgarians and Greeks; but no- 
ticeably fewer crimes are ascribed to 
Serbia's account. But this volume en- 
titled " Conquest in the Balkans" (Car- 
negie Endowment) has, I fear, been too 
little read, and it is a duty to bring it to 
the notice of all. 

Moreover, who would refuse pardon to 
that gallant Serbian nation for the excesses 
they may have committed? Who would 
not accord to them the profound sympathy 
of France to-day, when the Prussian Em- 
peror, in his ruthless ferocity, has sacri- 



150 WAB 

lieed them as a bait for one of his most 
abominable and knavish plots • Poor little 
Serbia! With what magnificent heroism 
she has succeeded in defending herself 
against an enemy who did not even shrink 
from the atroeious act of burning her cap- 
ita] at a time when it was peopled solely 
by women and children! Poor little 
Serbia, suddenly become a martyr, and 
sublime! I would willingly at least win 
back for her some French hearts which 
my last book may perhaps have alienated. 
And that is the sole purpose of this letter. 



XV 

ABOVE ALL LET US NEVER 
FORGET! 

August 1st, 1915. 
A year ago to-day began that shameful 
violation of Belgian territory. In the 
midst of these appalling horrors, time, it 
seems, has hastened still more in its be- 
wildered flight, and already we have 
reached the anniversary of that foul deed, 
the blackest that has ever defiled the his- 
tory of the human race. This crime was 
committed after long, hypocritical pre- 
meditation, and no pang of remorse, no 
vestige of shame, caused those myriads of 
accomplices to stay their hands. It is a 
crime that leaves with us, in addition to 
immeasurable mourning, an impression of 
infinite sadness and discouragement, be- 
cause it proves that one of the greatest 

151 



152 WAR 

countries in Europe is hopelessly bank- 
rupt of all that men have agreed to call 
honour, civilisation, and progress. The 
barbarian onslaughts of ancient days were 
not only a thousand times less murderous, 
but, let it be specially noted, incomparably 
less revolting in character. There were 
certain dastardly deeds, certain acts of 
profanation, certain lies, at which those 
hordes that came to us from Asia hesi- 
tated; an instinctive reverence still re- 
strained them; and, moreover, in those 
times they did not destroy with such im- 
pudent cynicism, invoking the God of 
Christians in a burlesque pathos of 
prayer ! 

Thus in our own day has arisen a grisly 
Emperor, with a pack of princelings, his 
own progeny, a litter of wolves, whose most 
savage and at the same time most cowardly 
representative wears a death's head upon 
his helmet; and generals and millions of 



WAR 153 

Germans have been found ready to unite, 
after a calculated preparation of nearly 
half a century, in committing this same 
preliminary crime, the forerunner of so 
many others, and by way of prelude, to 
crush ignobly in their advance a little 
nation whom they had deemed without 
defence. 

But lo ! the little nation arose, quivering 
with sacred indignation, and attempted to 
check the great barbarism, suddenly un- 
masked ; to check it for at least a few days, 
even at the cost of a seemingly inevitable 
doom of annihilation. 

What starry crowns can history award 
worthy of that Belgian nation and of their 
King, who did not fear to bid them set 
themselves there as a barrier. 

King Albert of Belgium, dispossessed 
to-day of his all and banished to a hamlet 
— what tribute of admiration and homage 
can we offer him worthy of his acceptance 



154 WAR 

and sufficiently enduring? Upon tablets 
of flawless marble let us carve his name in 
deep letters so that it may be well insured 
against the fugitiveness of our French 
memories, which, alas! have sometimes 
proved a little untrustworthy, at least in 
face of the age-long infamies of Germany. 
May we remember for ever, we, and even 
our far distant posterity, that to save civil- 
ised Europe, and especially our own coun- 
try of France, King Albert did not for 
one moment shrink from those sheer, un- 
conditional sacrifices which seemed be- 
yond human strength. Spurning the 
tempting compromises offered by that 
monstrous emperor, he has fulfilled to the 
end his duty of loyal hero with a calm 
smile, as if nothing were more natural. 
And so perfect is his modesty that he is 
surprised if he is told that he has been 
sublime. 
As for Queen Elizabeth, let each one of 



WAR 155 

us dedicate to her a shrine in his soul. 
One of the most dreaded duties that falls 
almost invariably to the lot of queens is 
having to reign over adopted countries 
while exiled from their own. In the special 
case of this young martyred queen, this 
doom of exile which has befallen her, and 
many other queens, must be a far more 
exquisite torture, added to all the other 
evils endured, for a crushing fatality has 
come and separated her for ever from all 
who were once her own people, even from 
that noble woman, all devotion and 
charity, who was her mother. This addi- 
tional sorrow she bears with calm and 
lofty courage which never falters. She is 
by the King's side, his constant companion 
in the most terrible hours of all; a com- 
panion whose energy halts at nothing. 
And she is by the side of the poor who have 
lost their all by pillage or fire ; by the side 
of the wounded who are suffering or dying ; 



156 WAR 

to them, too, she is a companion, com- 
forting the lowliest with her adorable sim- 
plicity, shedding on all the increasing 
bounty of her exquisite compassion. Oh. 
may she be blest, reverenced, and glorified! 
And for her altar, dedicated within our 
souls, let ns choose very rare, very deli- 
cate Bowers, like unto herself. 



XVI 

THE INN OF THE GOOD 
SAMARITAN 

August, 1915. 

In spite of the kindly welcome which the 
visitor receives and a wholesome spirit 
of gaiety which never fails, it is an inn 
that I cannot honestly recommend without 
reserve. 

In the first place it is somewhat difficult 
of access, so much so that ladies are never 
admitted. To climb up to it — for it is 
perched very high — the traveller must 
needs make his way for hours through 
ancient forests which the axe had spared 
until a very few months ago, along un- 
known paths winding at steep gradients; 
among giant trees, pines or larches, felled 
yesterday, which still lie about in all direc- 
tions; paths that are concealed by elose- 

157 



158 WAE 

growing greenery with such jealous care 
that in the few open spaces occurring here 
and there trees have been planted right 
into the ground, trees uprooted elsewhere, 
and which are here only to hide the way- 
farer behind their dying branches. It 
may be supposed that on the neighbouring 
hills sharp eyes, unfriendly eyes, are 
watching, which necessitate all these pre- 
cautions. 

But there are many people on the road 
through those forests, which seemed at 
first sight virgin. Viewing from a little 
distance all these mountains covered with 
the same strong growth of forest, so lux- 
uriant, and everywhere so alike in appear- 
ance, who would imagine that they shel- 
tered whole tribes? And such strange 
tribes, evidently survivors of an entirely 
prehistoric race of men, and in the anom- 
alous position of having no women-folk. 
Here are nothing but men, and men all 



WAR 159 

dressed alike, with a singular fancy for 
uniformity, in old, faded, woollen great- 
coats of horizon blue. They have not paid 
much attention to their hair or beards, 
and they have almost the appearance of 
brigands, except that they all have such 
pleasant faces and such kindly smiles for 
the wayfarer that they inspire no terror. 
So far from this he is tempted rather to 
stop and shake hands with them. But 
what curious little dwellings they have 
built, some isolated, some grouped to- 
gether into a village ! Some of them are 
quite lightly constructed of planks of wood 
and are covered over with branches of 
pine, and within are mattresses of leaves 
that serve for beds. Some are under- 
ground, grim as caves of troglodytes, and 
the approach to them is protected by huge 
masses of rock, doubtless their defence 
against formidable wild beasts haunting 
the neighbourhood. And these dwellings 



160 WAR 

are always close to one of the innumer- 
able streams of clear water which rush 
down babbling from the heights, among 
pink flowers and mosses — for these minia- 
ture waterfalls are many, and all these 
mountains are full of the pleasant music 
of running w T ater. From time to time, to 
be sure, other sounds are heard, hollow 
sounds of evil import, detonations on the 
right or the left, which the echoes prolong. 
Can it be that there is artillery concealed 
almost everywhere throughout the forest ! 
What want of taste, thus to disturb the 
symphony of the springs. 

They have probably just arrived here, 
these savage tribes, dressed in greyish 
blue ; they are recent settlers, for all their 
arrangements are new and improvised, and 
so likewise is the interminable winding 
road which they have laid out, and which 
to-day our motor cars, with the help of a 
little goodwill, manage to climb so rapidly. 



WAR 161 

One of the peculiarities of these hidden 
villages which crouch in the shade of the 
lofty forest trees is that each has its own 
cemetery, tenderly cared for, so close that 
it almost borders on the dwellings, as if 
the living were anxious not to sever their 
comradeship with the dead. But how 
comes it that death is so frequent among 
these limpid streams, in a region where 
the air is so invigorating and so pure? 
These tombs, so disquieting in their dis- 
proportionate numbers, are ranged in 
rows, all with the same humble crosses of 
wood. They have borders of ferns care- 
fully watered, or of little pebbles, well 
selected. Flowers such as thrive in shady 
places and are common in these parts, 
shoot up their pretty pink spikes all 
around, and the whole scene is steeped in 
the green translucent twilight which 
envelops the whole mountain, the twilight 
of these unchanging trees, pines and 
11 



162 .WAR 

larches, stretching away into infinity, 
crowded together like wheat in a field, tall 
and straight like gigantic masts. 

In our haste to reach that Inn of the 
Good Samaritan, which is our destination, 
we keep on climbing at a rapid pace, not- 
withstanding acute-angled corners where 
our cars have to back before they can 
effect the turn, and other awkward places 
where our cars slip on the wet soil, skid, 
and come to a stop. 

These tribes, so primitive in appear- 
ance, through whose midst we have been 
travelling since the morning, seem to be 
concentrating their energies especially on 
making these roads, which, one would 
think, cannot really be necessary to their 
simple mode of existence. In our onward 
course we meet nearly all these men, work- 
ing with might and main, with axes, 
shovels, stakes and picks, hurrying as if 
the task were urgent. They stand erect 



WAR 163 

for a moment to salute us, smiling a little 
with touching and respectful familiarity, 
and then they bend down again to their 
arduous work, levelling, enlarging, tim- 
bering, or digging out roots that are in the 
way, and rocks that encroach. And when 
we were told that it is scarcely ten months 
since they began this exhausting work in 
the midst of forest, virgin hitherto, we are 
fain to believe that all the Genii of the 
mountains have roused themselves and 
lent their magic help. 

Oh ! what tribute of admiration mingled 
with emotion do we owe to these men, like- 
wise, the builders of roads, our gallant ter- 
ritorials, who seem to be playing at wild 
men of the woods. They have revived for 
us the miracles of the Roman Legions who 
so speedily opened up roads for their 
armies through the forests of Gaul. 
Thanks to their prodigious labour, per- 
formed without a break, without a mur- 



164 WAR 

mur, the conditions of warfare in this 
region, only yesterday still inaccessible, 
will be radically changed for the benefit of 
our dear soldiers. Everything will reach 
them on the heights ten times more ex- 
peditiously than before — arms, avenging 
shells, rations ; and in a few hours the seri- 
ously wounded will be gently driven down 
in carriages to comfortable field hospitals 
in the plains. 

Roughly speaking at an altitude of about 
fourteen or fifteen hundred metres, the 
ancient forest with its arching trees ends 
abruptly. The sky is deep blue above our 
heads, and infinite horizons unfold around 
us their great spectacular display of illu- 
sive images. The air is very clear and 
pure to-day in honour of our arrival, and 
it is so marvellously transparent that we 
miss no detail of the most distant land- 
scapes. 

We are told that we have reached the 



WAR 165 

plateau where stands that hospitable inn; 
it is, however, not yet in sight. But the 
plateau itself, where is it situated, in 
which country of the world ? In the fore- 
ground around us and below nothing is 
visible except summits uniformly wooded 
with trees of the same species ; this brings 
back to mind those great, monstrous ex- 
panses of forest which must have covered 
the entire earth in the beginning of our 
geological period, but it is characteristic 
of no particular country or epoch of his- 
tory. In the distance, it is true, there are 
signs of a more tell-tale nature. Thus 
yonder, on the horizon, that succession of 
mountains, all mantled with the same dark 
verdure, bears a close resemblance to the 
Black Forest ; that chain of glaciers over 
there, silhouetting so clearly against the 
horizon its ridges of rosy crystal, might 
well be taken for the Alps ; and that peak 
in particular is too strikingly like the 



166 WAR 

Jungfrau to admit of any doubt. But I 
may not be more definite in my descrip- 
tion; I will merely say that those bluish 
plains in the East, rolling away at our 
feet like a great sea, were but lately 
French, and are now about to become 
French once more. 

How spacious is this plateau, and how 
naked it stands among all those other sum- 
mits mantled with trees. Here there is not 
even brushwood, for doubtless the winter 
winds rage too fiercely ; here nothing grows 
but short, thick grass and little stunted 
plants with insignificant flowers. It is 
ecstasy to breathe here in this delicious 
intoxication of pure air and of spacious- 
ness and light. And yet there is some 
vague sense of tragedy about the place, 
due perhaps to those great round holes, 
freshly made; to those cruel clefts with 
which here and there the earth is rent. 
What can have fallen here from the sky, 



WAR 167 

leaving such scars on the level surface? 
We are warned, moreover, that monstrous 
birds of a very dangerous kind, with iron 
muscles, often come and hover about over- 
head in that fair blue sky. And from time 
to time a cannon shot from some invisible 
battery comes to disturb the impressive 
silence and reverberates in the valleys 
below; and then comes, long drawn out, 
the whirring of a shell, like a flight of 
partridges going past. 

We notice some French soldiers, Alpine 
chasseurs, or cavalry on their horses, scat- 
tered in groups about this plain, as it may 
be called, situated at such an altitude. 
At this moment all lift their heads and 
look in the same direction ; this is because 
one of those great dangerous birds has just 
been signalled ; it is flying proudly, remote 
in the open sky, in the clear blue. But im- 
mediately it is pursued by white clouds, 
quite miniature clouds, which give the 



168 WAR 

effect of being created instantaneously, 
only to vanish as quickly — little explosions 
of white cotton wool, one might say — and 
it seems impossible that they should be 
freighted with death. However, that evil 
bird has understood ; he is aware that good 
marksmen are aiming at him, and he turns 
back on hasty wing, while our soldiers 
gaily burst out laughing. 

And the inn$ It lies just in front of 
us, a few hundred paces away; it is that 
greyish hut with its gay tricolour floating 
on the light breeze of these altitudes, but 
near it stands a very lofty cross of pine- 
wood, four or five yards high, stretching 
out its arms as in solemn warning. 

The fact is, I must admit, that people 
die very frequently at this Inn of the Good 
Samaritan or in its neighbourhood, and it 
is for this reason that in the beginning I 
recommended it with reserve. It is sur- 
prising, is it not, in such health-giving air I 



WAR 169 

But the truth of it is indisputable, and it 
has been necessary hurriedly to attach to 
it a cemetery whose existence this tall 
cross of pine proclaims from afar to 
travellers. 

Yes, many men die here, but they die 
so nobly, a death of all deaths most desir- 
able — each according to his own tempera- 
ment, according to the nature of his soul : 
some in the calm serenity of duty done, 
others in magnificent exaltation, but all in 
glory. 

Can this be the famous inn — in other 
words the dwelling of those officers who 
command this outpost, and where their 
friends on rare and brief visits, liaison 
officers, bearers of dispatches, etc., are sure 
of finding such cordial and genial hospital- 
ity — this modest hutting built of planks'? 
So it is, and that there may be no mistake, 
there is an imposing signboard in the 
fashion of old times. Shaped like a shield, 



170 WAR 

it hangs from an iron rod and bears the in- 
scription, "Inn of the Good Samaritan.' ' 
The legend is painted in ornamental let- 
ters, and the humour of it is irresistible 
among such Crusoe-like destitution. 
Doubtless one day some officer in a spe- 
cially happy mood thought of this jest as a 
welcome for comrades coming thither on 
special duty. Naturally he found at once 
among his men one who was a carpenter 
and another a decorator in civil life, both 
very much amused at being ordered to put 
this unpremeditated idea forthwith into 
execution. 

The furniture of the inn is very rough 
and ready, if the truth be told, and the wall 
of planks just shelters you from the snow 
or rain, but from the wind hardly, and 
from shells not at all. But one fills one's 
lungs to the full with the air that reaches 
one through the little windows, and from 
the threshold, looking downwards, there is 



WAR 171 

a marvellous bird's-eye view of great for- 
ests, of an unending chain of glaciers, clear 
as crystal, of unbounded distances, and 
even over the tops of clouds. 

Ah well ! all along the battle front there 
are such Inns of the Good Samaritan. 
These others are perched less high, and 
they do not bear the same name; indeed 
very often they have no name at all ; but 
in all of them prevails the same spirit of 
kindly hospitality, firm confidence, smiling 
endurance and cheerful sacrifice. Here, 
as there, between two showers of shells, 
men are capable of amusing themselves 
with childish trifles, so stout of heart are 
they, and if access were not forbidden on 
military grounds I would invite all pes- 
simists in the background, who have doubts 
of France and of her destiny, to come here 
for a cure. 

And now, having seen the inn, let us pay 
a pious visit to the annex, the inevitable 



172 WAR 

annex, alas! Around the wooden cross 
which dominates it is a piece of ground 
enclosed with an open fence, made of 
boughs of larch artistically intertwined. 
Within its bounds those tombs, too numer- 
ous already, preserve something of a mili- 
tary aspect, ranged as they are in such 
correct alignment and all with the same 
little crosses, adorned with a wreath of 
greenery. The Cross ! In spite of all in- 
fidelity, denial, scorn, the Cross still re- 
mains the sign to which a tender instinct 
of atavism recalls us at the approach of 
death. There is not a tree, not a shrub, 
for none grow here : on the ground there is 
only the short grass that grows upon this 
wind-swept plateau. An attempt has been 
made, to be sure, to make borders of cer- 
tain stunted plants found in the neighbour- 
hood, but rows of pebbles last best. And 
in five weeks or so, thick shrouds of snow 
will begin to cover up everything, until 



WAR 173 

another spring succeeds the snows and the 
grass grows green again, in the midst of 
still deeper oblivion. 

Nevertheless let us not pity them, for 
they have had the better part, these young 
dead who rest there on that glorious moun- 
tain-top which is destined to become once 
more, after the war, a solitude ineffably 
calm, high above forest, valley and plain. 



XVII 

FOR THE RESCUE OF OUR 
WOUNDED 

August, 1915. 

The preservation of the lives of our dear 
wounded, who day by day are stricken 
down upon the field of battle, depends nine 
times out of ten on the rapidity with which 
they are carried in ; on the gentleness and 
promptness with which they are taken to 
the field hospitals, where they may be put 
into comfortable beds and left in the care 
of all the kind hands that are waiting for 
them. This fact is not sufficiently well 
known; often it happens that wounds 
which would have been trifling have be- 
come septic and mortal because they have 
been left too long covered with inadequate, 
uncleanly bandages, or have trailed for 
many hours on the earth or in the mud. 

In the first weeks of the war when we 
were taken unawares by the barbarians' 

174 



WAR 175 

attack, treacherous and sudden as a thun- 
derbolt, it was not bullets and shrapnel 
alone that killed the sons of France. 
Often, too, it happened that help was slow 
in arriving; sufficient haste could not be 
made, and it was impossible to cope right 
at the beginning with these shortcomings, 
in spite of much admirable devotion and 
ingenuity in multiplying and improving 
the means of service. Since then helpers 
have poured in from all sides ; gifts have 
been showered with open hands ; organisa- 
tion has been created with loving zeal, and 
things are already working very well. But 
much still remains to be done, for the work 
is immense and complex, and it is our duty 
to hold ourselves more than ever in readi- 
ness, in anticipation of great final strug- 
gles for deliverance. 

Now a society is being formed for send- 
ing to the Front some fresh squadrons of 
fast motor-ambulances, furnished with 
cots and mattresses of improved design. 



176 WAR 

Thus thousands more of our wounded will 
be laid immediately between clean sheets, 
then brought into hospital with all speed, 
without that delay which is a cause of gan- 
grened wounds, without those jolts that 
aggravate the pain of fractured bones and 
inflict yet more grievous suffering on those 
dear bruised heads. 

But in spite of the first magnificent dona- 
tions, a remainder of the money has still 
to be found to complete the enterprise 
satisfactorily. And so I beseech all 
mothers, whose sons may fall at any mo- 
ment ; I beseech all those who have in the 
firing-line a kinsman dear to them; I be- 
seech them to send their offerings without 
hesitation, without calculation, so that 
soon, before the April battles begin, sev- 
eral hundreds of those great life-saving 
ambulances may be ready to start, which 
will assuredly preserve for us a vast 
number of precious lives. 



XVIII 
AT RHEIMS 

August, 1915. 

On a beautiful August evening I am 
hastening in a motor car towards Rheims, 
one of our martyred towns, where I am 
hoping to find shelter for the night before 
continuing my journey to the General 
Headquarters of another Army. In order 
to avoid military formalities I wish to 
enter the town before the sun sets, and it 
is already too low for my liking. 

The evening is typical of one of our 
splendid French summers; the air is ex- 
quisitely clear, of a delightful, wholesome 
warmth, tempered with a light, refreshing 
breeze. On the hillsides of Champagne 
the beautiful vines on which the grapes 
are ripening spread a uniform expanse of 
green carpet, and there are so many trees, 

12 177 



178 WAR 

so many flowers everywhere, gardens in 
all the villages, and roses climbing up all 
the walls. 

To-day the cannon is heard no more, and 
one would be tempted to forget that the 
barbarians are there close at hand if there 
were not so many improvised cemeteries 
all along the road. Everywhere there are 
these little graves of soldiers, all alike, 
which are now to be found from end to 
end of our beloved France, all along the 
battle front ; their simple crosses of wood 
are ranged in straight lines as if for a 
parade, topped, some of them, with a 
wreath ; others still more pathetically with 
a simple service-cap, red or blue, falling 
to rags. We salute them as we pass. 

Among these glorious dead there are 
some whose kindred will seek them out 
and bring them back to the province of 
their birth later, when the barbarians have 
gone aw r ay, while others, less favoured, will 



WAR 179 

remain there forever until the great final 
day of oblivion. But what masses of 
flowers people have already been at pains 
to plant there for them all. Around their 
resting-place there is a brave show of all 
shades of brilliant colour, dahlias, cannas, 
China asters, roses. Who has undertaken 
this labour of love? Girls from the near- 
est villages ? Or perhaps even their own 
brothers-in-arms, who dwell on the out- 
skirts everywhere like invisible subter- 
ranean tribes in these casemates, trench 
shelters, dug-outs of every shape covered 
over with green branches ? 

This region, you must know, is not very 
safe, and when we arrive at a section of 
the road which is too much exposed, a 
sentinel, especially posted there to give 
warning, instructs us to leave the high 
road for a moment, where we should run 
the risk of being seen and shelled, and to 
take some sheltered traverse behind the 
curtains of poplars. 



180 WAR 

One of my soldier-chauffeurs suddenly 
turns round to say to me : 

"Oh look, sir, there is an Arab ceme- 
tery. They have put on each grave their 
little crescents instead of the cross/ ' 

Here to be sure the humble stelae of 
white wood are all topped with the cres- 
cent of Islam, and this is something of a 
shock to us in the very heart of France. 
Poor fellows, who died for our righteous 
cause, so far from their mosques and their 
marabouts they sleep, and alas! without 
facing Mecca, because they who laid them 
piously to rest did not know that this was 
to them a requisite of peaceful slumber! 
But the same profusion of flowers has 
been brought to them as to our own coun- 
trymen, and I need not say that we salute 
them likewise — a little late, perhaps, for 
we pass them so rapidly. 

We reach Rheims just before sunset, and 
here a sudden sadness chills us. All is 



WAR 181 

silent and the streets almost deserted. The 

shops are closed, and some of the houses 
seem io gape at us with enormous holes in 
their walls. 

One of the infrequent wayfarers tells 
us that at the Hotel Golden Lion, Cathe- 
dral Square, we may still be able to find 
someone to take us in, and soon we are at 
the very foot of the noble ruin, which is 
still enthroned as majestically as ever in 
the midst of the martyred town, dominat- 
ing everything with its two towers of open 
stone-work. I stop my car, the sound of 
whose rolling in such a place seems prof- 
anation; the sadness of ruins is intensi- 
fied here into veritable anguish, and the 
silence is such that instinctively we begin 
to talk softly, as if we had already entered 
the great church that has perished. 

The Golden Lion — but its panes of 
glass are broken, the doors stand open, the 
courtyard is deserted. I send one of my 



182 WAR 

soldiers there, bidding him call, but not 
too loudly, in the midst of all this mourn- 
ful meditation. He returns; he has re- 
ceived no reply and has seen holes in the 
walls. The house is deserted. We must 
seek elsewhere. 

It is twilight. A golden after-glow still 
lingers around the magnificent summits of 
the towers, while the base is wrapped in 
shadow. Oh, the cathedral, the marvellous 
cathedral ! what a work of destruction the 
barbarians have continued to accomplish 
here since my pilgrimage of last Novem- 
ber. It had ever been a lace-work of stone, 
and now it is nothing but a lace-work torn 
in tatters, pierced with a thousand holes. 
By what miracle does it still hold together ? 
It seems as if to-day the least shock, a 
breath of wind perhaps, would suffice to 
cause it to crumble away, to resolve itself, 
as it were, into scattered atoms. How can 
it ever be repaired? What scaffolding 



WAR 183 

could one dare to let lean against those 
unstable ruins. In an attempt to afford it 
yet a little protection sandbags have been 
piled up, mountain high, against the pil- 
lars of the porticoes, the same precaution 
that has been taken in the case of St. 
Mark's in Venice, of Milan, of all those 
inimitable masterpieces of past ages 
which are menaced by the refined culture 
of Germany. Here the precautions are 
vain; it is too late, the cathedral is lost, 
and our hearts are wrung with sorrow and 
indignation as we look this evening upon 
this sacred relic of our past, our art, and 
our faith, in its death throes and its aban- 
donment. Ah, what savages ! And to feel 
that they are still there, close at hand, 
capable of giving it at any hour its coup 
de grace. 

To bid it farewell, perhaps a last fare- 
well, we will walk around it slowly with 
solemn tread, in the midst of this death- 



184 WAR 

like silence which seems to grow more 
intense as the light fails. 

But suddenly, just as we are passing the 
ruins of the episcopal palace, we hear a 
prelude of sound, a tremendous, hollow 
uproar, something like the rumbling of a 
terrible thunderstorm, near at hand and 
unceasing. And yet the evening sky is so 
clear ! Ah yes, we were warned, we know 
whence it comes ; it is the bombardment of 
our heavy artillery, which was expected 
half an hour after sunset, directed at the 
barbarians' trenches. This is a change for 
us from the silence, this cataclysmal music, 
and it contributes to our walk a different 
kind of sadness, another form of horror. 
And we continue to gaze at the wonderful 
stone carving overhanging us — the bold 
little arches, the immense pointed arches, 
so frail and so exquisite. Indeed how does 
it all still hold together ? Up above there 
are little columns which have lost their 



WAR 185 

base and remain, as it were, suspended in 
the air by their capitals. The windows 
are no more ; the lovely rose- windows have 
been destroyed ; the nave has huge fissures 
from top to bottom. In the twilight the 
whole cathedral assumes more and more 
its phantom-like aspect, and that noise 
which causes everything to vibrate is still 
increasing. It is a question whether so 
many vibrations will not bring about the 
final downfall of those too fragile carv- 
ings which hitherto have held on so per- 
sistently at such great heights above our 
heads. 

Here comes the first wayfarer in that 
solitude, a well-dressed person. He is hur- 
rying, actually running. 

"Do not stay there," he shouts to us; 
"do you not see that they are going to 
bombard V 9 

' ' But it is we, the French, who are firing. 
It is our own artillery. Come, do not run 
so fast. ,, 



186 WAR 

"I know very well that it is we, but each 
time the enemy revenge themselves on the 
cathedral. I tell you that there will be a 
rain of shells here immediately. Look out 
for yourselves. " 

He goes on. So much the better ; it was 
kind of him to warn us, but his jacket and 
his billy-cock jarred upon the melancholy 
grandeur of the scene. 

Where a street opens into the square two 
girls now appear ; they stop and hesitate. 
Evidently they are aware, these two, that 
the barbarians have a habit of taking a 
noble revenge upon the cathedral, and that 
shells are about to fall. But doubtless 
they have to cross this square in order to 
reach their home, to get down into their 
cellar. Will they have time ? 

They are graceful and pretty, fair, bare- 
headed, with their hair arranged in 
simple bands. They gaze into the air with 
their eyes raised well up towards the 



WAR 187 

heavens, perhaps to see if death is begin- 
ning to pass that way, but more likely to 
send up thither a prayer. I know not 
what last brightness of the twilight, in 
spite of the encroaching gloom, illumines 
so delightfully their two upturned faces, 
and they look like saints in stained-glass 
windows. Both make the sign of the cross, 
and then they make up their minds, and 
hand in hand they run across the square. 
With their religious gestures, their faces 
expressing anxiety, yet courage too and 
defiance, they suddenly seem to me charm- 
ing symbols of the girlhood of France; 
they run away, indeed, but it is clear that 
they would remain without fear if there 
were some wounded man to carry away, 
some duty to perform. And their flight 
seems very airy in the midst of this tre- 
mendous uproar like the end of the world. 
We are going away too, for it is wiser. 
In the streets there are a very few way- 



188 WAB 

favors who are running to take shelter, 
running with their backs hunched up. 
although nothing is foiling yet, like people 
without umbrellas surprised by a shower. 
One of them, who nevertheless does not 
mind stopping, points out to us the last 
hotel still remaining open, a " perfectly 
safe" hotel, he says, over there in a quarter 
of the town where no shell has ever fallen. 
God forbid that 1 should dream of laugh- 
ing at them, or fail to admire as much as it 
deserves their persistent and calm heroism 
in remaining here, in defiance o( every- 
thing, in their beloved town, which is suf- 
fering more and more mutilations. But 
who would not be amused at that instinct 
which causes the majority of mankind to 
hunch their backs against hail of what- 
ever description? And then, is it because 
the air is fresh and soft and it is good 
to be alive that after the unspeakable 
heartache at the sight of the cathedral and 



WAR 189 

the passion verging on tears, a calm of 
reaction sets in and in that moment every- 
thing amuses me? 

At the end of a quiet street, where the 
noise of the cannonade is muffled in the 
distance, we iind the hotel which was 
recommended to us. 

"Rooms, "says the host, very pleasantly, 
standing on his doorstep, "oh, as many as 
you like, the whole hotel if you wish, for 
you will understand that in times such as 

these travellers And yet as far as 

shells go you have nothing to fear here." 

An appalling din interrupts his sen- 
tence. All the windows in the front of 
the house are shivered to fragments, to- 
gether with tiles, plaster, branches of 
trees. In his haste to run away and hide 
he misses the step on the threshold and 
falls down flat on his face. A dog who 
was coming along jumps upon him, full of 
importance, recalling him to order with a 



190 WAR 

fierce bark. A cat, sprung from I know 
not where, dies through space like an aero- 
lith, uses my shoulder for a jumping-oif 
place, and is swallowed up by the mouth 
of a cellar. Bui words are too tedious for 
that series of catastrophes, which lasts 
scarcely as long as two lightning flashes. 
And they continue to bombard us with 
admirable regularity, as if timing them- 
selves with a metronome; the wall of the 
house is already riddled with scars. 

It is very wrong, I admit, to take these 
things as a jest, and indeed with me that 
impression is only superficial, physical, I 
might say ; that which endures in the depth 
of my soul is indignation, anguish, pity. 
But at this entry which the Germans made 
into our hotel, that peaceful spot, with 
flourish of their great orchestra, in the 
presence of so many surprises, how retain 
one's dignity ! There is a fair number of 
little shells, it seems, but no heaw shells : 



WAR 191 

they travel with their long whistling 
sound, and burst with a harsh din. 

"Into the cellar, gentlemen," cries the 
innkeeper, who has picked himself up un- 
hurt. Apparently there is nothing else to 
be done. I should have come to that con- 
clusion myself. So I turn round to order 
in my three soldiers too, who had remained 
outside to look at a hole made by shrapnel 
in the body of the car. But upon my word 
I believe they are laughing, the heartless 
wretches ; and then I can restrain myself 
no longer, I burst out laughing too. 

Yes, it is very wrong of us, for presently 
there will be bloodshed and death. But 
how resist the humour of it all : the good 
man fallen flat on his face, the self-impor- 
tance of the dog, who thought he must put 
a stop to the situation, and especially the 
cat, the cat swallowed up by an air-hole 
after showing us as a supreme exhibition 
of flight its little hindquarters with its tail 
in the air. 



XIX 

THE DEATH-BEARING GAS 

.\Y: . 1915. 

It is a place of horror, conceived, it 
might be thought, by Dante. The air is 
• y. stifling; two or three nightlights. 
which 9eem to l\ 1 nf shining 

ghffyi scarcely piera the vaporous, 
darkness whieh exhales an 
sweat and forer. Busy people 
are whispering there anxiously, but 
principal s s u i is an ago- 

nised ] :h. This gasping 

eon:;- m a number of cots, in rows. 
bing flier, on vri w lying 

human forms sts h< aving 

id and lab .-.thing, lifting the 

bedclothes as though the moment of the 
ieath-rattLe :.. me. 

s :s one of our advance neld bos- 



WAR 193 

pitals, improvised, as best might be, the 
day after oiu\ot' the most damnable abomi- 
nations committed by the Germans. The 
nature of their affliction made it impos- 
sible to transfer all these sons of Prance, 
from whom seems to come the noise of the 
death-rattle without hope of recovery, to 
a plaee farther away. This large hall with 
dilapidated walls was yesterday a wine cel- 
lar for storing barrels of champagne ; these 
cots — about fifty in number — were made 
in feverish haste of branches which still 
retain their bark, and they resemble the 
kind of furniture in our gardens that we 
call rustic. But why is there this heat, in 
which it is almost impossible to draw a 
natural breath, pouring out from those 
stoves? The reason for it is that it is 
never hot enough for the lungs of persons 
who have been asphyxiated. And this 
darkness: wherefore this darkness, which 
gives a Dantesque aspect to this place of 

13 



194 WAR 

torment, and which must be such a hin- 
drance to the gentle, white-gowned nurses ? 
It is because the barbarians are there in 
their burrows, quite near this village, with 
the shattering of whose houses and church 
spire they have more than once amused 
themselves; and if, at the gloomy fall of 
a November night, through their ever 
watchful field-glasses, they saw a range of 
lighted windows indicating a long hall, 
they would at once guess that there was 
a field hospital, and shells would be show- 
ered down upon the humble cots. It is 
well known, this preference of theirs for 
shelling hospitals, Red Cross convoys, 
churches. 

And so there is scarcely light enough to 
see through that misty vapour which rises 
from water boiling in pans. Every minute 
nurses fetch huge black balloons, and the 
patients nearest to suffocation stretch out 
their poor hands for them; they contain 



WAR 195 

oxygen, which eases the lungs and alle- 
viates the suffering. Many of them have 
these black balloons resting on chests pant- 
ing for breath, and in their mouths they 
are holding eagerly the tube through which 
the life-saving gas escapes. They are like 
big children with feeding bottles ; it adds 
a kind of grisly burlesque to these scenes 
of horror. Asphyxia has different effects 
upon different constitutions, and calls for 
variety in treatment. Some of the suf- 
ferers, lying almost naked on their beds, 
are covered with cupping-glasses, or 
painted all over with tincture of iodine. 
Others even — these alas! are very seri- 
ously affected indeed — others are all swol- 
len, chest, arms, and face, and resemble 
toy figures of blown-up gold-beater's skin. 
Toy figures of gold-beater's skin, children 
with feeding bottles — although these com- 
parisons alone are true, yet indeed it seems 
almost sacrilege to make use of them when 



196 WAR 

the heart is wrung with anguish and you are 
ready to weep tears of pity and of wrath. 
But may these comparisons, brutal as they 
are, engrave themselves all the more deeply 
upon the minds of men by reason of their 
very unseemliness, to foster there for a 
still longer time indignant hatred and a 
thirst for holy reprisals. 

For there is one man who spent a long 
time preparing all this for us, and this man 
still goes on living ; he lives, and since re- 
morse is doubtless foreign to his vulturine 
soul, he does not even suffer, unless it be 
rage at having missed his mark, at least 
for the present. Before thus unloosing 
death upon the world he had coldly com- 
bined all his plans, had foreseen every- 
thing. 

"But nevertheless supposing," he said 
to himself, "niy great rhinoceros-like on- 
rushes and my vast apparatus of carnage 
were by some impossible chance to hurl 



WAR 197 

itself in vain against a resistance too mag- 
nificent ? In that case I should dare per- 
haps, calculating on the weakness of neu- 
tral nations, I should dare perhaps to defy 
all the laws of civilisation, and to use 
other means. At all hazards let us be 
prepared." 

And, to be sure, the onrush failed, and, 
timidly at first, fearing universal indigna- 
tion, he tried asphyxiation after exerting 
himself, be it understood, to mislead pub- 
lic opinion, accusing, with his customary 
mendacity, France of having been the 
originator. His cynical hope was justi- 
fied ; there has been, alas ! no general arous- 
ing of the human conscience. No more 
at this than at earlier crimes — organised 
pillage, destruction of cathedrals, outrage, 
massacres of children and women — have 
the neutral nations stirred ; it seems indeed 
as if the crafty, ferocious, deathly look of 
his Gorgon-like or Medusa-like head had 



198 WAR 

frozen them all to the spot. And at the 
present hour in which I am writing the 
last to be turned to stone by the Medusa 
glare of the monster is that unfortunate 
King of Greece, inconsistent and bung- 
ling, who is trembling on the brink of a 
precipice of most terrible crimes. That 
some nations remain neutral from fear, 
that indeed is comprehensive enough ; but 
that nations, otherwise held in the highest 
repute, can remain pro-German in senti- 
ment, passes our understanding. By what 
arts have they been blinded, these nations ; 
by what slanders, or by what bribe 1 

Our dear soldiers with their seared 
lungs, gasping on their " rustic" cots, seem 
grateful when, following in the major's 
footsteps, someone approaches them, and 
they look at the visitor with gentle eyes 
when he takes their hand. Here is a man 
all swollen, doubtless unrecognisable by 
those who had only seen him before this 



WAR 199 

terrible turgidity, and if you touch his 
poor, distended cheeks however lightly, the 
fingers feel the crackling of the gases that 
have infiltrated between skin and flesh. 

"Come, he is better than he was this 
morning/ ' says the major, and in a low 
voice meant for the nurse's ear, he con- 
tinues, "This man too, nurse, I am be- 
ginning to think that we shall save. But 
you must not leave him alone for one mo- 
ment on any account." 

Oh, what unnecessary advice, for she has 
not the smallest intention of leaving him 
alone, this white-gowned nurse, whose eyes 
have already black rings around them, the 
result of a watch of forty-eight hours with- 
out a break. Not one of them will be left 
alone, oh no ! To be sure of this, it is suffi- 
cient to glance at all those young doctors 
and all those nurses, somewhat exhausted, 
it is true, but so attentive and brave, who 
will never let them out of their sight. 



•200 W A K 

And, thank heaven, nearly all of them 
will be saved. 1 As soon as they are well 
enough to be moved they will be taken far 
away from this Gehenna at the Front, 
where the Kaiser's shells delight to hurl 
themselves upon the dying. They will be 
put more eomfortably to bed in quiet held 
hospitals, where indeed they will Buffer 
greatly for a week, a fortnight, a month, 
but whence they will emerge without e\- 
eessive delay, better advised, more pru- 
dent, in haste to return onee more to the 
battle. 

It may be said that the seheme of gas 
attacks has failed, like that other seheme 
o( attacks in great savage onrushes. The 
result was not what the (lorgon's head had 
expeeted, and yet with what accurate cal- 
culation the time for these attacks has been 
seleeted, always at the most favourable 

1 Of six hundred who were gassed that night, 
nuuv than live hundred are out of danger. 



WA B 201 

moment. It Lb well known that the Ger- 
mans, past masters of the art of spying, 
and always informed of everything, never 
hesitate to choose for their attacks of what- 
ever kind, days of relief, hours when new- 
comers in the trenches opposite to thorn 
are still in the disorder of their arrival. 
So on the evening on which the last crime 
was committed six hundred of our u\<-n had 
.just taken up their advanced position after 

a Long and tiring march. Suddenly in the 

midst of a volley of shells which surprised 
them in their first sleep, they could dis- 
tinguish, \i(-r(t and there, little cautious 
sibilant sounds, as if made stealthily by 
sirens. This was the death-hearing gas 
which was diffusing itself around them, 
spreading out its thick, gloomy, irray 
clouds. At the same time their signal 
lights suddenly ceased to throw out 
through that mist more than a little dim 
illumination. Then distracted, already 



202 WAR 

suffocating, they remembered too late 
those masks which had been given them, 
and in which in any case they had no faith. 
They were awkward in putting* them on; 
some of them, feeling the scorching of their 
bronchia, urged by an irresistible impulse 
of self-preservation, even yielded to a de- 
sire to run, and it was these who were most 
terribly affected, for, breathing deeply in 
the effort of running, they inhaled vast 
quantities of chlorine gas. But another 
time they will not let themselves be caught 
in this way, neither these nor any others 
of our soldiers. Wearing masks hermet- 
ically closed, thev will station themselves 
immovably around piles of wood, pre- 
pared beforehand, whence sudden flames 
will arise, neutralising the poisons in the 
air, and the upshot of it all will be hardly 
more than an uncomfortable hour, un- 
pleasant while it lasts, but almost always 
without fatal result. It is true that in 



WAR 203 

those accursed dens which are their lab- 
oratories, Germany's learned men, con- 
vinced now that the neutral nations will 
acquiesce in anything, are making every 
effort to discover worse poisons still for 
us, but until they have found them, as on 
so many other occasions, the Gorgon gaze 
will have missed its mark. So much is 
certain. We, alas! have as yet found no 
means of returning them a sufficiently 
cruel equivalent ; we have no defence other 
than the protective mask, which, however, 
is being perfected day by day. And, after 
all, in the eyes of neutral nations, if they 
still have eyes to see, it is perhaps more 
dignified to make use of nothing else. At 
the same time, how very different our posi- 
tion would be if we succeeded in asphyxi- 
ating them too, these plunderers, assassins, 
aggressors, who broke into our country 
like burglars, and who, despairing of ever 
bursting through our lines, attempt to 



204 W A R 

smoke ns out ignominiously in OUT own 
home, in our own dear country o\' France, 

as they might smoke out rabbits in theft 

burrows, rats in their holes. No language 
of man had ever anticipated sneh trans- 
eeiuleni acts of infamy which would revolt 
the most degraded cannibals, and so there 
are no names for sneh aels. Our poor 
victims o( their gas, panting for breath 
in their eots, how ardently 1 wish that I 
Could exhibit them to all the world, to their 
fathers, sons, and brothers, to exeite in 
them a paroxysm o( saered indignation 
and thirst for vengeanee. Yes, exhibit 
them everywhere, to let everyone hear the 
death-rattle, even those neutral nations 
who are so impassive ; to eonviet o( obtuse- 
ness or oi' crime all those obstinate Paci- 
ficists, and to sound throughout the world 
the alarm against the barbarians who are 
in eruption all over Europe. 



XX 

ALL-SOULS' DAT WITH THE 
AEMTBS AT THE FRONT 

2nd November, 1915. 

Two or three days ago all along the front 

of the battle began the great festival in 
honour of OUT soldiers' graves. No mat- 
ter where they lie, grouped around 
churches in the ordinary nllage ceme- 
teries, ranged in rows with military preci- 
sion in little speeial eemeteries eonseerated 
to them, or even situated singly at the side 
of a road, in a eorner of a wood, or alone 
and lost in the midst of fields, everywhere, 
seen from afar off, under the gloomy sky 
of these November days and against the 
greyish background of the countryside, 
they attract the eyes with the brilliant 
newness of their decorations. Each grave 
is decked with at least four fine tricolours, 

20.5 



206 WAR 

their flagstatfs planted in the ground, two 
at the head, two at the foot, and an infinite 
number of flowers and wreaths tied with 
ribbons. It was the officers and the com- 
rades of our dead soldiers who subscribed 
together to give them all this, and who, 
sometimes in spite of great difficulties, 
sent to the neighbouring towns for the 
decorations, and then arranged them all 
with such pious care, even on the 
graves of those of whom little was known, 
and of those poor men, few in number, 
whose very names have perished. 

Here in this village where I chance to 
be staying in the course of my journey, 
the cemetery is built in terraces, and forms 
an amphitheatre on the side of a hill, and 
the corner dedicated to the soldiers is high 
up, visible to all the neighbourhood. There 
are fifteen of these graves, each with its 
four flags, making sixty flags in all. And 
in the bitter autumn wind they flutter 



WAR 207 

almost gaily, unceasingly, all these strips 
of bunting, they wanton in the air, inter- 
mingle, and their bright colours shine out 
more conspicuously. For the matter of 
that, no three other colours in combination 
set off one another so gaily as our three 
dear colours of France. 

And these tombs, moreover, have such 
quantities and quantities of flowers, 
dahlias, chrysanthemums and roses, that 
they seem to be covered with one and the 
same richly decorated carpet. During 
these days of festival, the rest of the ceme- 
tery is also very full of flowers, but it 
looks dull and colourless compared with 
that corner sacred to our soldiers. It is 
this favoured corner which is risible at 
first sight, from a distance, from all the 
roads leading to the village, and wayfarers 
would ask themselves : 

"What festival can they be celebrating 
with all those flags fluttering in the air?" 



208 WAR 

Two days before, I remember coming 
to see the preparations for these ingenious 
decorations. Chasseurs, with their hands 
full of bunches of flowers, were working 
there rapidly and thoughtfully, speaking 
in low tones. In the distance could be 
heard, though much muffled, the orchestra 
of the incessant battle in which the mag- 
nificent, great voice of our heavy artillery 
predominated ; it seemed like the mutter- 
ing of a storm all along the distant horizon. 
It was very gloomy in that cemetery, under 
an overcast sky, whence fell a semi-dark- 
ness already wintry in aspect. But the 
zeal of these chasseurs, who were decking 
the tombs so well, must yet have solaced 
the souls of the youthful dead with a little 
tender gaiety. 

And what beautiful, moving Masses 
were sung for them all along the front on 
the day of their festival. All the little 
churches — those at least that the barbar- 



WAR 209 

ians have not destroyed — had been deco- 
rated that day with all that the villages 
could muster in the way of flags, banners, 
tapers and wreaths. And they were too 
small, these churches, to hold the crowds 
that flocked to them. There were officers, 
soldiers, civil population, women mostly 
in mourning, whose eyes under their veils 
were reddened with secret tears. Some of 
the soldiers, of their own accord, desiring 
to honour the souls of their comrades with 
a very special concert, had taken pains to 
learn the Judgment hymns, the Dies irm, 
the De profundis, and their voices, unskil- 
fully led though they were, vibrated im- 
pressively in the unison of plain-song, 
which the organ accompanied. Indeed 
what could better prepare them for the 
supreme sacrifice and for a death nobly 
met than these prayers, this music and 
even these flowers ? 

They sang this morning, these impro- 

14 



210 WAR 

vised choristers, with a solemn transport. 
Then after Mass, in spite of the icy rain 
and the muddy roads, the crowds that 
issued from each church in procession be- 
took themselves to the cemeteries, in at- 
tendance on the priests bearing the solemn 
crucifix. And again, as on the day of the 
funerals, all the little graves were blessed. 
If I record these scenes, it is for the 
sake of mothers and wives and families, 
living far from here in other provinces 
of France, whose hearts no doubt grow 
heavier at the thought that the grave of 
someone dear to them may be neglected 
and very soon become unrecognisable. 
Oh let them take comfort ! In spite of the 
simplicity of these little wooden crosses, 
almost all alike, nowhere are they cared 
for and honoured so well as at the front ; 
in no other place could they receive such 
touching homage, such tribute of flowers, 
of prayers, of tears. 



XXI 

THE CROSS OF HONOUR FOR THE 
FLAG OF THE NAVAL BRIGADE! 

Paris, which is above all other towns 
famous for its noble impulses, was feting 
some days ago our Naval Brigade from 
the Yser — or rather the last survivors of 
the heroic Brigade, the few who had been 
able to return. It was well done thus to 
make much of them, but alas ! how soon it 
will all be forgotten. 

To-day, in honour of the Brigade, of 
which three-quarters were annihilated, our 
well-beloved and eminent Minister of 
Marine, Admiral Lacaze, has given in- 
structions that the glorious Order of the 
Day, in which the commander-in-chief 
bade them farewell, should be posted up 
on all our ships of war. It ends with these 
words : 

211 



212 WAR 

"The valiant conduct of the Naval 
Brigade on the plains of the Yser, at Nieu- 
port, and at Dixmude will always be to 
the Forces an example of warlike zeal and 
devotion to their country. The Naval 
Brigade and their officers may well be 
proud of this new and glorious page which 
they have inscribed on their records." 

Indeed this Order posted up on board 
the ships will be more permanent than the 
welcome that Paris gave them; but alas! 
this likewise will be forgotten, too soon 
forgotten. 

As it was decided when this Brigade of 
picked men were disbanded to preserve 
their flag for the Army so that their mem- 
ory might be perpetuated, could not the 
Cross of Honour be attached to a flag of 
such distinction 1 ? This idea, it seems, has 
been entertained, but perhaps — I know 
nothing of the matter — there is some im- 
peding clause in the regulations, for I 
seem to remember to have read there that 



WAR 213 

before it can be decorated with the Cross 
a flag must have been unfurled on the occa- 
sion of a great offensive or a splendid feat 
of arms. Now the case of our Naval 
Brigade is so unprecedented that no regu- 
lations could have made provision for it. 
How could they have unfurled their flag 
in that unparalleled conflict since in those 
days they still had none? This Brigade, 
hastily organised on the spur of the mo- 
ment, was thrown into the firing-line with- 
out that incomparable symbol, the tricol- 
our, which all the other brigades possessed 
before they set out. It was not until later, 
long after the great exploits with which 
they won their spurs, that their flag was 
presented to them, at a time when they had 
a somewhat less terrible part to play. In 
such circumstances I venture to hope that 
the regulation may be relaxed in their 
favour. If this flag of theirs were deco- 
rated, all the sailors who received it with 
such joy over there, that day when all its 



214 WAR 

three colours were still new and brilliant, 
would feel themselves distinguished at the 
same time as the flag itself, and later, in 
future days, when their descendants came 
to look at it, poor, sacred, tattered rem- 
nant, tarnished and dusty, this Cross, 
which had been awarded, would speak to 
them more eloquently of sublime deeds 
done on the Belgian Front. 

They can never be too highly honoured, 
the Naval Brigade, of whom it has been 
officially recorded : 

"No troops in any age have ever done 
what these have done." 

And here is an extract from a letter 
which, on the day when they were dis- 
banded, after reviewing them for the last 
time, General Hely d'Oissel wrote to the 
captain of the Paillet, who was then com- 
manding the Brigade, a letter which was 
read to all the sailors, drawn up in line, 
and which brought tears to their honest 
eyes: 



WAR 215 

"I should be happy to preserve the 
Brigade State (the terrible roll of dead, 
officers, non-commissioned officers, and 
men) as an eloquent witness of the im- 
mense services rendered to the country by 
this admirable Brigade, which the land 
forces are proud to have had in their ranks, 
and which I, personally, am proud to have 
had under my command during more than 
a year of the war. 

"This morning when I saw your mag- 
nificent sailors filing past with such cheer- 
fulness and precision, I could not but feel 
a poignant emotion when I reflected that 
it was for the last time." 

Indeed it was just there, in the blood- 
drenched marshes of the Yser, that for the 
second time, and finally, the onrush of the 
barbarians was broken. The two great 
decisive reverses suffered by that wretched 
Emperor of the blood-stained hands were, 
everyone knows, the retreat from the 



216 WAR 

Marne and then that cheek in Belgium. 
in the face of a very small handful of 

sailors of superhuman tenacity. 

They were not specially selected, these 
men sublimely stubborn ; no, they were the 
first to hand, chosen hastily from among 
the men in our ports. They had not even 
gone away to tight, but quietly to police 
the streets of Paris, and from Paris, one 
rine day, in the extremity o( our peril, 
they were dispatched to the Yser. without 
preparation, inadequately equipped, with 
barely sufficient food, and told simply: 

**Let yourselves be killed, but do not 
suffer the German beast to pass! At all 
costs resist for at least a week, to give us 
time to come to the rescue." 

Now they held out. it will be remem- 
bered, indefinitely, in the midst of a veri- 
table inferno of tire, shrapnel, clamour, 
crumbling ruins, cold, rain, engulring mud, 
and ever since that day when they brought 
to a standstill the onrush of the beast. 



WA R 217 

France felt that She was saved indeed. 

Indeed, as a general rule, it is sufficient 
to take any honest fellows whatsoever, and 
merely by putting a blue collar on them, 
you transform them into heroes. In the 
Chinese expedition, among other instances, 
1 have seen at close quarters the very same 
thing: a small handful of men, taken hap- 
hazard from one of our ships, commanded 
by very young officers who had only just 
attained their first band of gold braid, 
and this assembly of men, hastily mus- 
tered, suddenly became a force complete 
in itself, admirable, united, disciplined, 
zealous, fearless, capable of performing 
within a couple of days prodigies of en- 
durance and daring. 

Oh that Brigade of the Yser, whose 
destiny I just missed sharing! I had 
plotted desperately, I admit, for the sake 
of being attached to it, and I was about 
to gain my end when an obstacle arose 
which I could never have foreseen and 



218 WAR 

which excluded me inexorably. To have 
to renounce this dream when it was almost 
within my grasp will be for me unto my 
life's end a subject of burning and tor- 
menting regret. But at least let me com- 
fort myself a little by paying my tribute 
of admiration to those who were there. 
Lot 1110 at least have this little pleasure 
of working to glorify their memory. 
Therefore I herewith beg on their behalf 
— not only in my own name, for several 
of my comrades in the Navy associate 
themselves in my prayer, comrades who 
were likewise not among them, the disin- 
terested nature of whose motives cannot 
consequently be questioned — I beg here- 
with on their behalf almost confidently, 
although the regulation may prove me in 
the wrong, that it may be accorded to them, 
the distinction they have earned ten times 
over, at which no one can take umbrage, 
and that a scrap of red ribbon be fastened 
to their Mas. 



XXII 
THE ABSENT-MINDED PILGRIM 

December, 1915. 

That day, during a lull in the fighting, 
the General gave me permission to take 
a motor ear for three or four hours to go 
and look for the grave of one of my 
nephews, who was struck down by a shell 
during our offensive in September. 

From imperfect information I gathered 
that he must be lying in a humble emer- 
gency cemetery, improvised the day after 
a battle, some live or six hundred yards 

away from the little town of T whose 

ruins, still bombarded daily and becoming 
more and more shapeless, lie on the ex- 
treme border of the French zone, quite 
close to the German trenches. But I did 
not know how he had been buried, whether 
in a common grave, or beneath a little 

219 



220 WAR 

cross inscribed with his name, which would 
make it possible to return later and re- 
move the body. 

"To get to T ," the General had 

said, "make a detour by the village of 

B , that is the way by which you will 

run the least risk of being shelled. At 

B , if the circumstances of the day 

seemed dangerous, a sentinel would stop 
you as usual; then you would hide your 
motor behind a wall, and you could con- 
tinue your journey on foot — with the usual 
precautions, you will understand." 

Osman, my faithful servant, who has 
shared my adventures in many lands for 
twenty years, and who, like everyone else, 
is a soldier, a territorial, had a cousin 
killed in the same light as my nephew, and 
he is buried, so he was told, in the same 
cemetery. So he has obtained permission 
to accompany me on my pious quest. 

To-day all that gloomy countryside is 



WAR 221 

powdered with hoar-frost and over it 
hangs an icy mist ; nothing can be distin- 
guished sixty yards ahead, and the trees 
which border the roads fade away, envel- 
oped in great white shrouds. 

After driving for half an hour we are 
right in the thick of that inferno of the 
battle front, which, from habit, we no 
longer notice, though it was at first so im- 
pressive and will later on be so strange to 
remember. All is chaos, hurly-burly; all 
is overthrown, shattered; walls are cal- 
cined, houses eviscerated, villages in ruins 
on the ground ; but life, intense and mag- 
nificent, informs both roads and ruins. 
There are no longer any civilians, no 
women or children; nothing but soldiers, 
horses, and motor cars ; of these, however, 
there are such numbers that progress is 
difficult. Two streams of traffic, almost un- 
interrupted, divide the roads between 
them ; on one side is everything that is on 



222 WAR 

its way to the firing-line ; on the other side 
everything that is on its way back. Great 
lorries bringing up artillery, munitions, 
rations, and Red Cross supplies jolt along 
on the frozen cart ruts with a great din 
of clanging iron, rivalling the noise, more 
or less distant, of the incessant cannonade. 
And the faces of all these different men, 
who are driving along on these enormous 
rolling machines, express health and reso- 
lution. There are our own soldiers, now 
wearing those bluish helmets of steel, which 
recall the ancient casque and bring us back 
to the old times ; there are yellow-bearded 
Russians, Indians, and Bedouins with 
swarthy complexions. All these crowds 
are continuously travelling to and fro 
along the road, dragging all sorts of 
curious things heaped up in piles. There 
are also thousands of horses, picking their 
way among the huge wheels of innumer- 
able vehicles. Indeed it might be thought 



WAR 223 

that this was a general migration of man- 
kind after some cataclysm had subverted 
the surface of the earth. Not so ! This is 
simply the work of the great Accursed, 
who has unloosed German barbarism. He 
took forty years to prepare the monstrous 
coup, which, according to his reckoning, 
was to establish the apotheosis of his in- 
sane pride, but which will result in noth- 
ing but his downfall, in a sea of blood, in 
the midst of the detestation of the world. 

There is certainly a remarkable lull here 
to-day, for even when the rolling of the 
iron lorries ceases for a moment, the 
rumbling of the cannon does not make it- 
self heard. The cause of this must be the 
fog and in other respects, too, how greatly 
it is to our advantage, this kindly mist ; it 
seems as if we had ordered it. 

Here we are at the village of B , 

which, the General had expected, would 
be the terminus of our journey by car. 



224 WAR 

Hero the throng is chiefly concentrated 

among- shattered walls and burnt roofs; 
helmets and overcoats of ,, hori:;on" blue 
are crowding and bustling about. And 
every place is blocked with these heavy 

wagons, which, as soon as they arrive, 
eome to a halt, or take up a convenient 

position tor starting on the return jour- 
ney. For here we have reached the border 
of that region where, as a rule, men can 
only venture by night, on foot, with muffled 
tread; or if by day, one by one, so that 
they may not be observed by German tield- 
glasses. At the end o( the village, then, 
signs of life eease abruptly, as if out off 
dean with the stroke of an axe. Suddenly 
there are no more people. The road, it is 

true, leads to that town oi T , which 

is our destination; but all at once it is 
quite empty and silent. Bordered by its 
two rows of skeleton trees, white with 
frost, it plunges into the dense white fog 



WAR 225 

with an air of mystery, and it would not 
be surprising to read here, on some sign- 
post, '-Road to Death." 

We hesitate for a moment. I do not, 
however, see any of the signals which are 
customary at places where a halt must be 
made, nor the usual little red flag, nor the 
warning sentry, holding his rifle above his 
head with both hands. So the road is con- 
sidered practicable to-day, and when I ask 

if indeed it leads to T , some sergeants 

who are there salute and confine their 
answer to the word "Yes, sir," without 
showing any surprise. So all that we have 
to do is to continue, taking, nevertheless, 
the precaution of not driving too fast, so 
as not to make too mueh noise. 

And it is merely by this stillness into 
which we are now plunging, by this soli- 
tude alone, that I am aware that we are 
right in the very front ; for it is one of the 
strange characteristics of modern warfare 

15 



226 WAR 

that the tragic zone bordering on the bur- 
rows of the barbarians, is like a desert. 
Not a soul is visible; everything here is 
hidden, buried, and — except on days when 
Death begins to roar with loud and ter- 
rible voice — most frequently there is noth- 
ing to be heard. 

We go on and on in a scenery of dismal 
monotony, continually repeating itself, all 
misty and unsubstantial in appearance as 
if made of muslin. Fifty yards behind us 
it is effaced and shut away; fifty yards 
ahead of us it opens out, keeping its dis- 
tance from us, but without varying its 
aspect. The whitish plain with its frozen 
cart ruts remains ever the same; it is 
blurred and does not reveal its distances ; 
there is ever the same dense atmosphere, 
resembling cold white cotton wool, which 
has taken the place of air, and ever the 
two rows of trees powdered with rime, 
looking like big brooms which have been 



WAR 227 

rolled in salt and thrust into the ground 
by their handles. It is clear indeed that 
this region is too often ravaged by light- 
ning, or something equivalent. Oh, how 
many trees there are shattered, twisted, 
with splintered branches hanging in 
shreds ! 

We cross French trenches running to 
the right and left of the road, facing the 
unknown regions towards which we are 
hastening ; they are ready, several lines of 
them, to meet the improbable contingency 
of a retreat of our troops; but they are 
empty and are merely a continuation of 
the same desert. I call a halt from time to 
time to look around and listen with ears 
pricked. There is no sound ; everything is 
as still as if Nature herself had died of all 
this cold. The fog is growing thicker still, 
and there are no field-glasses capable of 
penetrating it. At the very most they 
might hear us arrive, the enemy, over there 



228 WAR 

and beyond. According to my maps we 
have still another two miles at least before 
us. Onwards ! 

But suddenly there appears to have been 
an evocation of ghosts; heads, rows of 
heads, wearing blue helmets, rise together 
from the ground, right and left, near and 
far. Upon my soul! they are our own 
soldiers to be sure, and they content them- 
selves with looking at us, scarcely showing 
themselves. But for these trenches, which 
we are passing so rapidly, to be so full 
of soldiers on the alert, we must be re- 
markably close to the Ogre's den. Never- 
theless let us go a little farther, as the 
kindly mist stays with us like an 
accomplice. 

Five hundred yards farther on I remem- 
ber the enemy's microphones, which alone 
could betray us; and it so happens that 
the frozen earth and the mist are two 
wonderful conductors of sound. Then it 



WAR 229 

suddenly occurs to me that I have gone 
much too far, that I am surrounded by- 
death, that it is only the fog which shel- 
ters us, and the thought that I am respon- 
sible for the lives of my soldiers makes 
me shudder. It is because I am not on 
duty ; my expedition to-day is of my own 
choosing, and in these conditions, if any- 
thing happened to one of them, I should 
suffer remorse for the rest of my life. It 
is high time to leave the car here ! Then I 
shall continue my journey on foot towards 

the town of T , to find out from our 

soldiers who are installed there in cellars 
of ruined houses, whereabouts the ceme- 
tery lies which I am seeking. 

But at this same moment a densely 
crowded cemetery is visible in a field to 
the left of the road; there are crosses, 
crosses of white wood, ranged close to- 
gether in rows, as numerous as vines in 
the vineyards of Champagne. It is a 



230 WAR 

humble cemetery for soldiers, quite new, 
yet already extensive, powdered with rime 
too, like the surrounding plains, and in- 
finitely desolate of aspect in that colour- 
less countryside, which has not even a 
green blade of grass. Can this be the ceme- 
tery we are seeking? 

"Yes, certainly this is it," exclaims 
Osman, "this is it, for here is my poor 
cousin's grave. Look, sir, the first, close 
to the ditch which borders the cemetery. 
I read his name here. ' ' 

Indeed, I read it myself, "Pierre 

D ." The inscription is in very large 

letters, and the cross is facing in our direc- 
tion more than the others, as if it would 
call to us : 

"Halt! we are here. Do not run the 
risk of going any farther. Stop!" 

And we stop, listening attentively in 
the silence. There is no sound, no move- 
ment anywhere, except the fall of a bead 



WAR 231 

of frost, slipping off the gaunt trees by 
the wayside. We seem to be in absolute 
security. Let us then calmly enter the 
field where this humble cross seems to have 
beckoned to us. 

Osman had carefully prepared two little 
sealed bottles, containing the names of our 
two dead friends, which he intended to 
bury at their feet, fearing lest shells should 
still be capable of destroying all the labels 
on the graves. It is true we have carelessly 
forgotten to bring a spade to dig up the 
earth, but it cannot be helped, we shall 
do it as best we may. The two chauffeurs 
accompany us, for knowing the reason for 
our expedition, they had, with kindly 
thoughtfulness, each brought a camera to 
take a photograph of the graves. Pierre 

D had been discovered at once. There 

remained only my nephew to be found 
among these many frozen graves of youth- 
ful dead. In order to gain time — for the 



232 WAR 

place is not very reassuring, it must be 
confessed — let us divide the pious task 
among us, and each of us follow one of 
these rows, ranged with such military 
regularity. 

I do not think human imagination could 
ever conceive anything so dismal as this 
huge military cemetery in the midst of all 
this desolation, this silence which one 
knows to be listening, hostile and treacher- 
ous, in this horrible neighbourhood whose 
menace seems, as it were, to loom over 
us. Everything is white or whitish, be- 
ginning with the soil of Champagne, which 
would always be pale even if it were not 
powdered with innumerable little crystals 
of ice. There is no shrub, no greenery, not 
even grass ; nothing but the pale, cinder- 
grey earth in which our soldiers have been 
buried. Here they lie, these two or three 
hundreds of little hillocks, so narrow that 
it seems that space is precious, each one 



WAR 233 

marked with its poor little white cross. 
Garlanded with frost, the arms of all these 
crosses seem fringed with sad, silent tears 
which have frozen there, unable to fall, 
and the fog envelops the whole scene so 
jealously that the end of the cemetery can- 
not be clearly seen. The last crosses, hung 
with white drops, are lost in livid indefi- 
niteness. It seems as if this field alone 
were left in the world, with all its myriad 
pearls gleaming sadly, and naught else. 

I have bent down over a hundred graves 
at least and I find nothing but unknown 
names, often even that cruel phrase, "Not 
identified.' ' I say that I have bent down, 
because sometimes, instead of being 
painted in black letters, the inscription was 
engraved on a little zinc plate — nothing 
better was to be had — engraved hastily and 
difficult to decipher. At last I discover 
the poor boy whom I was seeking, "Ser- 
gent Georges de F." There he is, in line 



234 WAR 

as if on a parade ground, between his com- 
panions, all alike silent. A little plate of 
zinc has fallen to his lot, and his name has 
been patiently stippled, doubtless with the 
help of a hammer and a nail. His is one 
of the few graves decked with a wreath, a 
very modest wreath to be sure, of leaves 
already discoloured, a token of remem- 
brance from his men who must have loved 
him, for I know he was gentle with them. 
For reference later, when his body will 
be removed, I am now going to draw a plan 
of the cemetery in my notebook, counting 
the rows of graves and the number of 
graves in each row. Look! bullets are 
whistling past us, two or three in succes- 
sion. Whence can they be coming to us, 
these bullets? They are undoubtedly in- 
tended for us, for the noise that each one 
makes ends in that kind of little honeyed 
song, "Oooee you! Cooee you!" which is 
characteristic of them when they expire 



WAR 235 

somewhere in your direction, somewhere 
quite close. After their flight silence pre- 
vails again, but I make more haste with 
my drawing. 

And the longer I remain here the more I 
am impressed with the horror of the place. 
Oh this cemetery which, instead of ending 
like things in real life, plunges little by 
little into enfolding mists; these tombs, 
these tombs all decked with gem-like icicles 
which have dropped as tears drop; the 
whiteness of the soil, the whiteness of 
everything, and Death which returns and 
hovers stealthily, uttering a little cry like 
a bird! Yonder, by the grave of Pierre 

D , I notice Osman, likewise much 

blurred in the fog. He has found a spade, 
which has doubtless remained there ever 
since the interments, and he finishes bury- 
ing the little bottle which is to serve as a 
token. 

Again that sound, "Cooee you! Cooee 



236 WAR 

you!" The place is decidedly unhealthy, 
as the soldiers say. I should be to blame 
if I lingered here any longer. 

Upon my soul, here comes shrapnel! 
But before I heard it explode in the air I 
recognised it by the sound of its flight, 
which is different from that of ordinary 
shells. This first shot is aimed too far to 
the right, and the fragments fall twenty or 
thirty yards away on the little white hil- 
locks. But they have found us out, so much 
is certain, and that is owing to the micro- 
phones. This will continue, and there is 
no cover anywhere, not a single trench, 
not a single hole. 

" Stoop down, sir, stoop down," shouts 
Osman from the distance, seeing another 
coming towards me while my attention is 
still occupied with the graves. Why should 
I stoop down? It is a useful precaution 
against shells. But against shrapnel, 
which strikes downwards from above? 



WAR 237 

No, we ought to have our steel helmets, 
but carelessly, anticipating no danger, we 
left them in the car with our masks. All 
that is left for us is to beat a hasty retreat. 
Osman comes running towards me with 
his spade and his second little bottle, and 
I shout at him : 

"No, no, it is too late, you must run 
away." 

Good heavens, the car has not even been 
turned ! Why, that was an elementary pre- 
caution, and as soon as we arrived I ought 
to have seen to that. What a long, black 
record of carelessness to-day ; where is my 
head 1 It is because our entry to the ceme- 
tery was so undisturbed. I call out to the 
two chauffeurs who were still taking 
photographs : 

"Stop that, stop! Go at once and turn 
the car ! Not too fast though, or you will 
make too much noise, but hurry up! 
Run!" 



238 WAR 

Osman took advantage of this diversion 
with the chauffeurs to begin digging in 
the ground near me. 

"No, I tell you, stop at once. Can you 
not see that they are still shelling us ? Run 
and get behind a tree by the roadside." 

"But it is all right, sir, it is just finished. 
It will be finished by the time the car has 
been turned.' ' 

In my heart I am glad that he is dis- 
obeying me a little and completing the 
work. Never was a hole dug so rapidly 
nor a bottle buried so nimbly. Then he 
puts back the earth, jumps on it to flatten 
it down, and throws down his sexton's 
spade. Then we run away at full speed, 
stepping on the hillocks of our dead, apolo- 
gising to them inwardly. Nothing seems 
so ridiculous and stupid as to run under 
fire. But I am not alone; the safety of 
these soldiers is in my charge, and I should 
be guilty if I delayed them for as much as 
a second in their flight. 



WAR 239 

Shrapnel is still bursting, scattering its 
hail around us. And how strange and 
subtle are the ways of modern warfare, 
where death comes thus seeking us out 
of invisible depths, depths of a horizon 
that looks like white cotton wool; death 
launched at us by men whom we can see 
no more than they can see us, launched 
blindly, yet in the certainty of finding us. 

We reach the car just as it has finished 
turning ; we jump in, and off our car goes 
at full speed, all open. We pass the occu- 
pied trenches like a hurricane; this time 
heads are scarcely raised because of the 
shower of shrapnel. These men, to be 
sure, are under cover, but not so we, who 
have nothing but our speed to save us. 

In our frantic flight, in which my part 
is simply passive, my imagination is free 
to return to that gloomy cemetery and its 
dead. And it was strange how clearly we 
could hear the shrapnel in the midst of this 



240 WAR 

silence and in this extraordinary mist, 
which increased, like a microphone, the 
noise of its flight. It is, moreover, per- 
haps the first time that I have heard it 
performing a solo apart from all the cus- 
tomary clamour, in intimacy, if I may say 
so, for it has done me the honour of com- 
ing solely on my account. Never before, 
then, had I felt that almost physical ap- 
preciation of the mad velocity of these 
little hard bodies, and of the shock with 
which they must strike against some frag- 
ile object, say a chest or a head. 

The game is over, and we are entering 

again the village of B . Here, out of 

range of shrapnel, only long-distance guns 
could reach us. We have not even a broken 
pane of glass or a scratch. Instinctively 
the chauffeurs draw up, just as I was about 
to give the order, not because the car is 
out of breath, or we either, but we need a 
moment to regain our composure, to 



WAR 241 

arrange the overcoats thrown into the car 
in a confused heap, which, after our hur- 
ried departure, danced a saraband with 
cameras, helmets, and revolvers. 

And then, like people who at last suc- 
ceed in finding a shelter from a shower 
in a gateway, we look at one another and 
feel inclined to laugh — to laugh in spite of 
the painful and still recent memory of our 
dead, to laugh at having made good our 
escape, to laugh because we have succeeded 
in doing what we set out to do, and espe- 
cially because we have defied those im- 
beciles who were firing at us. 



16 



XXIII 
THE FIRST SUNSHINE OF MARCH 

March 10th, 1916, 

It is just here, I believe, that that zone, 

some fifteen to twenty miles in breadth, so 
terribly torn and rent, which stretches 
through our land of France from the 
North Sea to Alsace, following the line of 
those trenches, where the barbarians have 
dug themselves in, it is just here, I be- 
lieve, that that zone, where suffering and 
glory reign supreme, attains the climax of 
its nightmare-like illusiveness, the climax 
of its horror. I say "just here" because 
I am not allowed to be more definite ; just 
here, however, in a certain province which 
had even before the war a depressing- 
nickname, something like "the desolate 
province," "the mean province,' ' or even, 
if you like, "the lousy province.' ' The 

242 



WAR 243 

reason was that even before it was laid 
waste it was already very barren, almost 
without verdure; it had nothing to show 
except unfruitful valleys, some clumps of 
stunted pines, some poverty-stricken vil- 
lages, which had not even the saving grace 
of antiquity, for century by century sav- 
ages from Germany had come and dis- 
ported themselves there, and w T hen they 
went away everything had to be rebuilt. 

And now since the great new onrush, 
which surpassed all abominations ever be- 
fore experienced, how strange, fantastic 
almost, seems this region of woe, with its 
calcined ruins, its chalky soil dug over and 
again dug over down to its very depths, as 
if by myriads of burrowing animals. 

Once again I make my way to-day in my 
motor car into the midst of it all on some 
mission assigned to me, and I had never 
yet seen it in all the mire of the thaw, in 
which our poor little w r arriors in blue caps 



244 WAR 

are so uncomfortably engulfed up to mid- 
leg. I feel my heart sinking more and more 
the farther I go along these broken-up 
roads, which are becoming still more 
crowded with our dear soldiers, all lament- 
ably coated with greyish mud. The occa- 
sional villages on our road are more and 
more damaged by shells, and peasant 
women or children are no longer to be 
seen ; there are no more civilians, nothing 
but blue helmets, but of these there are 
thousands. The rapid melting of the snow 
in such a sudden burst of simshine marks 
the distant landscape with zebra-like 
stripes, white and earth-coloured. And all 
the hills which we pass now seem to be in- 
habited by tribes of troglodytes, while 
every slope which faces us, who are coming 
in this direction, and which, owing to its 
position, has thus escaped the notice and 
the fire of the enemy, is riddled with 
mouths of caves, some ranged in rows, 



WAR 245 

some built in stories one above the other, 
and from these peer out human heads in 
helmets, enjoying the sun. What can this 
country be? Is it prehistoric, or merely 
very remote? Surely no one would say 
that it was France. Save for this bitter, 
icy wind, this country, with its sky almost 
too blue to-day for a northern sky, might 
be taken for the banks of the upper Nile, 
the Libyan ridge where subterranean cav- 
erns gape. 

Again a semblance of a village appears, 
the last through which I shall pass, for 
those which are distant landmarks on the 
road that leads towards the barbarians, 
are nothing more now than hapless heaps 
of stone resembling barrows. This village, 
too, be it understood, is three-quarters in 
ruins; there remain fragments of walls 
in grotesque shapes, letting in the daylight 
and displaying a black marbling of soot 
where the chimneys used to be. But many 



246 WAR 

soldiers are gaily having their breakfast 
in the purely imaginary shelter afforded 
them by these remains of houses. There 
are pay-sergeants even, who are seated un- 
concernedly at improvised tables, busy 
with their writing. 

Bang! A shell! It is a shell hurled 
blindly and from a great distance by the 
barbarians, without definite purpose, 
merely in the hope that it may succeed in 
hurting someone. It has fallen on the 
ruins of a roofless stable, where some poor 
horses are tethered, and here are two of 
them who have been struck down and are 
lying bellies upwards and kicking out, as 
they do when they are dying; they stain 
the snow crimson witli blood spurting from 
their chests in jets, as if forced from a 
pump. 

The village soon disappears in the dis- 
tance, and I enter this no man's land, 
always rather a solemn region, which 



WAR 247 

from end to end along the front indicates 
the immediate neighbourhood of the bar- 
barians. The March sun, astonishingly 
strong, beats down upon this tragic desert 
where great sheets of white snow alternate 
with broad, mud-coloured surfaces. And 
now whenever my car stops and pauses, 
for some reason or other, and the engine is 
silent, the noise of the cannon is heard 
more and more loudly. 

At last I reach the farthest point to 
which my car can convey me ; if I took it 
on farther it would be seen by the Boches, 
and the shells that are roaming about here 
and there in the air would converge upon 
it. It must be safely bestowed, together 
with my chauffeurs, in a hollow of the un- 
dulating ground, while I continue my jour- 
ney alone on foot. 

First of all I have to telephone to Gen- 
eral Headquarters. The telephone office 
is that dark hole over there, hidden among 



248 WAE 

scanty bushes. Climbing down a very 
narrow flight of steps, I penetrate seven 
or eight yards into the earth, and there I 
find four soldiers installed as telephone 
girls, illumined by tiny electric lamps that 
shine like glow-worms. These are terri- 
torials, about forty years of age, and the 
man who hands me the telephone appara- 
tus wears a wedding ring — doubtless he 
has a wife and children living somewhere 
yonder out in the open air, where life is 
possible. Nevertheless he tells me that he 
has been six months in this damp hole, 
beneath the surface of ground which is 
continually swept by shells, and he tells 
me this with cheerful resignation, as if the 
sacrifice were quite a natural thing. In 
the same spirit his companions speak of 
their white-ant existence without a shade 
of complaint. And these, too, are worthy 
of admiration, all these patient heroes of 
the darkness, equally so, perhaps, with 



WAR 249 

their comrades who fight in the open air 
in the light of day, with mutual encourage- 
ment. 

Emerging from the underground cave, 
where the noises are muffled, I hear very 
clearly the cannonade ; my eyes are dazzled 
by the unwonted sunlight which illumines 
all those white stretches of snow. 

I have to journey about two miles 
through this strange desert to reach a pal- 
try little clump of sorry-looking pines 
which I perceive over there on some rising 
ground. It is there that I have made an 
appointment to meet an officer of sappers, 
whom my business concerns, for the pur- 
pose of fulfilling my mission. 

A pretence of a desert, I ought rather to 
call it, for underground it is thickly popu- 
lated by our soldiers, armed and alert. At 
the first signal of an attack they would 
rush out through a thousand apertures; 
but for the moment, throughout the whole 



250 WAE 

extent of this tract, so sun-steeped and 
yet so cold, not more than one or two blue 
caps are visible, belonging to men who are 
stealing along from one shelter to 
another. 

And it is, moreover, a terribly noisy 
desert, for besides the continual detona- 
tion of artillery from varying ranges, 
there is a noise like huge kinds of beetles 
flying, which, as they pass, make almost 
the same buzzing sound as aeroplanes, but 
they all fly so fast as to be invisible. Their 
flight is haphazard, and when they strike 
their heads hard against the ground 
pebbles, earth, scrap-iron, spout up in jets 
shaped like wheat-sheaves. On the eastern 
horizon, silhouetted against the sky, stands 
one of those tumuli of ruins which now 
mark the place of former villages ; and it is 
here especially that those huge beetles are 
bent on falling, raising each time clouds of 
plaster and dust. It is, to be sure, a use- 



WAR 251 

less and idle bombardment, for already all 
this has perished. 

To-day especially, being a day of a great 
thaw, a distance of two miles here in this 
region where so many of our poor soldiers 
are doomed to exist, is equal to a distance 
of at least ten miles elsewhere — it is such 
heavy going. You sink up to your ankles 
in mud, and you cannot draw your foot 
out, for the mud sticks tight like glue. The 
wind still remains cold and icy, but in the 
midst of a sky too deeply blue shines a sun, 
beating down upon my head, and under 
the steel helmet, which grows heavier and 
heavier, beads of sweat stand upon my 
forehead. The snow has made up its mind 
to melt, and that suddenly. All the sum- 
mits of those melancholy-looking hills, 
bared of their covering, resume again their 
brown colour and resemble hindquarters 
of animals couching on these plains which 
still remain white. 



252 WAR 

This is the first time that I find myself 
absolutely, infinitely alone, in the midst of 
this scene of intense desolation, which, 
though to-day it happens to glitter with 
light, is none the less dismal. Until I reach 
the little wood whither I am bound on duty 
there is nothing to think about, nothing 
with which I need concern myself. I need 
not trouble to get out of the way of shells, 
for they would not give me time, nor even 
to select places where to put my feet, since 
I sink in equally wherever I step. And so, 
gradually, I find myself relapsing into a 
state of mind characteristic of former days 
before the war, and I look at all these 
things to which I had grown accustomed 
and view them impartially, as if they were 
new. Twenty short months ago, who would 
have imagined such scenes ? For instance, 
these countless spoil-heaps, white in col- 
our, because the soil of this province is 
white, spoil-heaps which are thrown up 



WAR 253 

everywhere in long lines, tracing on the 
desert so many zebra-like stripes; is it 
possible that these indicate the only tracks 
by which to-day our soldiers of France can 
move about with some measure of safety? 
They are little hollow tracks, some undu- 
lating, some straight, communication 
trenches which the French nickname " in- 
testines." These have been multiplied 
again and again, until the ground is fur- 
rowed with them unendingly. What 
prodigious work, moreover, they repre- 
sent, these mole-like paths, spreading like 
a network over hundreds of leagues. If 
to their sum be added trenches, shelter 
caves, and all those catacombs that pene- 
trate right into the heart of the hills, the 
mind is amazed at excavations so extensive, 
which would seem the work of centuries. 
And these strange kinds of nets, 
stretched out in all directions, would any- 
one, unless previously warned and accus- 



254 WAR 

tomed to them, understand what they 
were? They look as if gigantic spiders 
had woven their webs around countless 
numbers of posts, which stretch out beyond 
range of sight, some in straight lines, some 
in circles or crescents, tracing on that wide 
tract of country designs in which there 
must surely be some cabalistic significance 
intended to envelop and entangle the bar- 
barians more effectively. Since I last 
came this way these obstructing nets must 
have been reinforced to a terrible extent, 
and their number has been multiplied by 
two, by ten. In order to achieve such in- 
extricable confusion our soldiers, those 
weavers of snares, must have made in them 
turnings and twists with their great bob- 
bins of barbed wire carried under their 
arms. But here, at various points, are en- 
closures, whose purpose is obvious at a 
glance and which add to the grisly horror 
of the whole scene ; these fences of wood 



WAR 255 

surround closely packed groups of humble 
little wooden crosses made of two sticks. 
Alas ! what they are is clear at first sight. 
Thus, then, they lie, within sound of the 
cannonade, as if the battle were not yet 
over for them, these dear comrades of 
ours who have vanished, heroes humble 
yet sublime — inapproachable for the pres- 
ent, even for those who weep for them, 
inapproachable, because death never 
ceases to fly through the air which stirs 
overhead, above their little silent gather- 
ings. 

Ah! to complete the impression of un- 
reality a black bird appears of fabulous 
size, a monster of the Apocalypse, flying 
with great clamour aloft in the air. He is 
moving in the direction of France, seek- 
ing, no doubt, some more sheltered region, 
where at last women and children are to 
be found, in the hope of destroying some 
of them. I keep on walking, if walking 



256 WAR 

it can be called, this wearisome, pitiless 
repetition of plunges into snow and ice- 
cold mud. At last I reach the clump of 
trees where we have arranged to meet. 
I am thankful to have arrived there, for 
my helmet and cap were encumbrances 
imder that unexpectedly hot sun. I am, 
however, before my time. The officer 
whom I invited to meet me here — in order 
to discuss questions concerning new works 
of defence, new networks of lines, new pits 
— that is he, no doubt, that blue silhouette 
coming this way across the snow-shrouded 
ground. But he is far away, and for a 
few more moments I can still indulge in 
the reverie with which I whiled away the 
journey, before the time comes when I 
must once more become precise and busi- 
nesslike. Evidently the place is not one 
of perfect peace, for it is clear that these 
melancholy boughs, half stripped of leaves 
already, have suffered from those great 



WAR 257 

humming cockchafers that fly across from 
time to time, and have been shot through 
as if they were no stronger than sheets of 
paper. It is, to be sure, but a small wood, 
yet it keeps me company, wrapping me 
round with an illusion of safety. 

I am standing here on rising ground, 
where the wind blows more icily, and I 
command a view of the whole terrible land- 
scape, a succession of monotonous hills, 
striped in zebra fashion with whitish 
trenches; its few trees have been blasted 
by shrapnel. In the distance that network 
of iron wire, stretching out in all direc- 
tions, shines brightly in the sun, and is 
not unlike the gossamer which floats over 
the meadows in spring time. And on all 
sides the detonation of artillery continues 
with its customary clamour, unceasing 
here, day and night, like the sea beating 
against the cliffs. 

Ah ! the big black bird has found some- 

17 



258 WAR 

one to talk to in the air. I see it suddenly 
assailed by a quantity of those flakes of 
white cotton wool (bursts of shrapnel), 
in appearance so innocent, yet so danger- 
ous to birds of his feather. So he hur- 
riedly turns back, and his crimes are post- 
poned to another day. 

From behind a neighbouring hill issues 
a squad of men in blue, who will reach me 
before the officer on the road yonder. It 
is one, just one, of a thousand of those 
little processions which, alas ! may be met 
with every hour all along the front, form- 
ing, as it were, part of the scenery. In 
front march four soldiers carrying a 
stretcher, and others follow them to re- 
lieve them. They, too, are attracted by 
the delusive hope of protection afforded 
by the branches, and at the beginning of 
the wood they stop instinctively for a 
breathing space and to change shoulders. 
They have come from first line trenches a 



WAR 259 

mile or two away and are carrying a seri- 
ously wounded man to a subterranean field 
hospital, not more than a quarter of an 
hour's walk away. They, likewise, had 
not anticipated the heat of that terrible 
March sun, which is beating down on their 
heads ; they are wearing their helmets and 
winter caps, and these weigh upon them 
as heavily as the precious burden which 
they are so careful not to jolt. In addi- 
tion to this they drag along on each leg a 
thick crust of snow and sticky mud, which 
makes their feet as heavy as elephants' 
feet, and the sweat pours in great drops 
down their faces, cheerful in spite of 
fatigue. 

"Where is your man wounded?" I ask, 
in a low voice. 

In a voice still lower comes the reply : 
"His stomach is ripped open, and the 

Major in the trench said that " they 

finish the sentence merely by shaking their 



260 WAR 

heads, but I have understood. Besides 
he has not stirred. His poor hand remains 
lying across his eyes and forehead, doubt- 
less to protect them from the burning sun, 
and I ask them : 

"Why have you not covered his face?" 

"We put a handkerchief over it, sir, but 
he took it off. He said he preferred to 
remain like this, so that he could still look 
at things betiveen his fingers/' 

Ah ! the last two men have blood as well 
as sweat pouring over their faces and 
trickling in a little stream down their 
necks. 

"It is nothing much, sir," they say, "we 
got that as soon as we started. We began 
by carrying him along the communication 
trenches, but that jolted him too much, so 
then we walked along outside in the open." 

Poor fellows, admirable for their very 
carelessness. To save their wounded man 
from jolts they risked their own lives. 



WAR 261 

Two or three of these death-bringing 
cockchafers, which go humming along here 
at all hours, came down and were crushed 
to pieces on the stones close to them, and 
wounded them with their shattered frag- 
ments. The Germans disdain to fire at a 
single wayfarer like myself, but a group 
of men, and a stretcher in particular, they 
cannot resist. One of these men, both of 
whom are dripping with blood, has per- 
haps actually received only a scratch, but 
the other has lost an ear ; only a shred is 
left, hanging by a thread. 

"You must go at once and have your 
wound dressed at the hospital, my friend," 
I say to him. 

"Yes, sir. And we are just on our way 
there, to the hospital. It is very lucky." 

This is the only idea of complaint that 
has entered his head. 

"It is very lucky." 

And he says this with such a quiet, pleas- 



262 WAR 

ant smile, grateful to me for taking an 
interest in him. 

I hesitated before going to look more 
closely at their seriously wounded man 
who never stirred, for I feared lest I should 
disturb his last dream. Nevertheless I ap- 
proach him very gently, because they are 
just going to carry him away. 

Alas ! he is almost a child, a child from 
some village; so much is clear from his 
bronzed cheeks, which have scarcely yet 
begun to turn pale. The sun, even as he 
desired, shines full upon his comely face, 
the face of a boy of twenty, with a frank 
and energetic expression, and his hand still 
shades his eyes, which have a fixed look 
and seem to have done with sight. Some 
morphia had to be given him to spare him 
at least unnecessary suffering. 

Lowly child of our peasantry, little 
ephemeral being, of what is he dreaming, 
if indeed he still dreams? Perhaps of a 



WAR 263 

white-capped mother who wept tender 
tears whenever she recognised his child- 
ish writing on an envelope from the front. 
Or perhaps he is dreaming of a cottage 
garden, the delight of his earliest years, 
where, he reflects, this warm March sun 
will call to life new shoots all along some 
old wall. On his chest I see the handker- 
chief with which one of the men had at- 
tempted to cover his face ; it is a fine hand- 
kerchief, embroidered with a marquis's 
coronet — the coronet of one of his stretcher 
bearers. He had desired still to look at 
things, in his terror, doubtless, of the black 
night. But soon he will suddenly cease 
to be aware of this same sun, which now 
must dazzle him. First of all he will enter 
the half -darkness of the field hospital, and 
immediately afterwards there will descend 
upon him that black inexorable night, in 
which no March sun will ever rise again. 
"Go on at once, my friends," I say to 



264 WAR 

them, "the wind blows too cold here for 
people drenched with sweat like you." 

I watch them move away, their legs 
weighted with slabs of viscous mud. My 
admiration and my compassion go with 
them on their way through the snow, where 
they plod along so laboriously. 

These men, to be sure, still have some 
privileges, for they can at least help one 
another, and careful hands are waiting to 
dress their wounds in an underground 
refuge, which is almost safe. But close 
to this, at Verdun, there are thousands of 
others, who have fallen in confused heaps, 
smothering one another. Underneath 
corpses lie dying men, whom it is impos- 
sible to rescue from those vast charnel- 
houses, so long ago and so scientifically 
prepared by the Kaiser for the greater 
glory of that ferocious young nonentity 
whom he has for a son. 



XXIV 

AT SOISSONS 

September, 1915. 

Soissons is one of our great martyred 
towns of the north ; it can be entered only 
by circuitous and secret paths, with such 
precautions as Redskins take in a forest, 
for the barbarians are hidden everywhere 
within the earth and on the hill close at 
hand, and with field-glasses at their wicked 
eyes they scan the roads, so that they may 
shower shrapnel on any rash enough to 
approach that way. 

One delightful September evening I was 
guided towards this town by some officers 
accustomed to its dangerous surroundings. 
Taking a zigzag course over low-lying 
ground, through deserted gardens, where 
the last roses of the season bloomed and 
the trees were laden with fruit, we reached 

265 



266 WAR 

without accident the suburbs, and were 
soon actually in the streets of the town. 
Grass had already begun to sprout there 
from the ruins during the last year in 
which all signs of human life had van- 
ished. From time to time we met some 
groups of soldiers, otherwise not a soul, 
and a death-like silence held sway under 
that wonderful late-summer sky. 

Before the invasion it was one of these 
towns, fallen a little into neglect, that exist 
in the depths of our provinces of France, 
with modest mansions displaying armorial 
bearings and standing in little squares 
planted with elms; and life there must 
have been very peaceful in the midst of 
somewhat old-fashioned ways and cus- 
toms. It is in the destruction of these old 
hereditary homes, which were doubtless 
loved and venerated, that senseless bar- 
barism daily wreaks its vengeance. Many 
of these buildings have collapsed, scat- 



WAR 267 

tering on to the pavement their antiquated 
furniture, and in their present immobility 
remain, as it were, in postures of suffer- 
ing. This evening there happens to be a 
lull. A few somewhat distant cannon shots 
still come and punctuate, if I may say 
so, the funereal monotony of the hours; 
but this intermittent music is so customary 
in these parts that though it is heard it 
attracts no notice. Instead of disturbing 
the silence, it seems actually to emphasise 
it and at the same time to deepen its 
tragedy. 

Here and there, on walls that still re- 
main undamaged, little placards are 
posted, printed on white paper, with the 
notice: " House still occupied.' ' Under- 
neath, written by hand, are the names of 
the pertinacious occupants, and somehow, 
I cannot say why, this strikes the observer 
as being a rather futile formality. Is it 
to keep away robbers or to warn off shells ? 



268 WAR 

And where else, in what scene of desola- 
tion similar to this, have I noticed before 
other little placards such as these 1 Ah, 
I remember ! It was at Pekin, during its 
occupation by European troops, in that 
unhappy quarter which fell into the hands 
of Germany, where the Kaiser's soldiers 
gave rein to all their worst instincts, for 
they may be judged on that occasion, those 
brutes, by comparing their conduct with 
that of the soldiers of the other allied 
countries, who occupied the adjoining 
quarters of the town without harming any- 
one. No, the Germans, they alone prac- 
tised torture, and the poor creatures de- 
livered up to their doltish cruelty tried to 
preserve themselves by pasting on their 
doors ingenuous inscriptions such as 
these, "Here dwell Chinese under French 
protection,' ' or "All who dwell here are 
Chinese Christians." But this availed 
them nothing. Besides, their Emperor — 



WAR 269 

the same, always the same, who is sure to 
be lurking, his tentacles swollen with 
blood, at the bottom of every gaping wound 
in whatever country of the world, the same 
great organiser of slaughter on earth, lord 
of trickery, prince of shambles and of 
charnel-houses — he himself had said to 
his troops: 

{ l Go and do as the Huns did. Let China 
remain for a century terrorised by your 
visitation." 

And they all obeyed him to the letter. 

But the treasures out of those houses in 
Pekin, pillaged by his orders, that lay 
strewn on the ancient paving-stones of 
the streets over there, were quantities of 
relics very strange to us, very unfamiliar 
— images sacred to Chinese worship, frag- 
ments of altars dedicated to ancestors, 
little stelae of lacquer, on which were in- 
scribed in columns long genealogies of 
Manchus whose origins were lost in night. 



270 WAR 

Here, on the other hand, in this town as 
it is this evening, the poor household gods 
that lie among the ruins are objects 
familiar to us, and the sight of them wrings 
our hearts even more. There is a child's 
cradle, a humble piano of antiquated de- 
sign, which has fallen upside down from 
an upper story, and still conjures up the 
thought of old sonatas played of an even- 
ing in the family circle. 

And I remember to have seen, lying in 
the filth of a gutter, a photograph rever- 
ently " enlarged' ' and framed, the portrait 
of a charming old grandmother, with her 
hair in curl-papers. She must have been 
long at rest in some burial vault, and 
doubtless the desecrated portrait was the 
last earthly likeness of her that still 
survived. 

The noise of the cannon comes nearer as 
we move on through these streets in their 
death-agony, where, during a whole sum- 



WAR 271 

mer of desolation, grasses and wild flowers 
have had time to spring up. 

In the midst of the town stands a cathe- 
dral, a little older than that of Rheims and 
very famous in the history of France. 
The Germans, to be sure, delighted in mak- 
ing it their target, always under the same 
pretext, with a stupid attempt at clever- 
ness, that there was an observation post 
at the top of the towers. A priest in a 
cassock bordered with red, who has never 
fled from the shells, opens the door for us 
and accompanies us. 

It is a very startling surprise to find on 
entering that the interior of the church is 
white throughout with the glaring white- 
ness of a perfectly new building. In spite 
of the breaches which the barbarians have 
made in the walls from top to bottom, it 
does not, at first sight, resemble a ruin, 
but rather a building in course of con- 
struction, a work which is still proceed- 



272 WAR 

ing. It is, moreover, a miracle of strength 
and grace, a masterpiece of our Gothic Art 
in the matchless purity of its first bloom. 
The priest explains to us the reason for 
this disconcerting whiteness. Before the 
coming of the barbarians, the long task 
was scarcely completed of exposing the 
under-surface of each stone in turn, so 
that the joints might be more carefully 
repaired with cement ; thus the grey hue 
with which the church had been encrusted 
by the smoke of incense, burnt there for 
so many centuries, had resolved itself into 
dust. It was perhaps rather sacrilegious, 
this scraping away of the surface, but I 
believe it helps to a better appreciation 
of the architectural beauties. Indeed, 
under that unvarying shade of cinder-grey 
which we are accustomed to find in our old 
churches, the slender pillars, the delicate 
groining of the vaults, seem, as it were, 
made all in one, and it might be imagined 



WAR 273 

that no skill had been necessary to cause 
them thus to soar upwards. Here, on the 
contrary, it is incomprehensible, discon- 
certing almost, to see how these myriads 
and myriads of little stones, so distinct 
each from the other in their renovated 
setting, remain thus suspended, forming a 
ceiling at such a height above our heads. 
Far better than in churches blurred with 
smoky grey is revealed the patient, mirac- 
ulous labour of those artists of old, who, 
without the help of our iron-work or our 
modern contrivances, succeeded in bestow- 
ing stability upon things so fragile and 
ethereal. 

Within the basilica, as without, prevails 
an anguished silence, punctuated slowly 
by the noise of cannon shots. And on the 
episcopal throne this device remains legi- 
ble, which, in the midst of such ruin, has 
the force of an ironic anathema launched 
against the barbarians, pax et justitia. 

18 



274 WAR 

Walking among the scattered debris, I 
pick my way as carefully as possible to 
avoid stepping on precious fragments of 
stained-glass windows ; it is pleasanter not 
to hear underfoot the little tinkle of break- 
ing glass. All the shades of light of the 
summer evening, seldom seen in such 
sanctuaries, stream in through gaping 
rents, or through beautiful thirteenth- 
century windows, now but hollow frame- 
works. And the double row of columns 
vanishes in perspective in the luminous 
white atmosphere like a forest of gigantic 
white reeds planted in line. 

Emerging from the cathedral, in one of 
the deserted streets, we come upon a wall 
covered with printed placards, which the 
shells seem to have been at special pains to 
tear. These placards w r ere placed side by 
side as close together as possible, the mar- 
gins of each encroaching upon those of its 
neighbours, as if jealous of the space the 



WAR 275 

others occupied and all with an appear- 
ance of wishing to cover up and to devour 
one another. In spite of the shrapnel 
which has riddled them so effectively, some 
passages are still legible, doubtless those 
that were considered essential, printed as 
they were in much larger letters so that 
they might better strike the eye. 

" Treason! Scandalous bluff !" shouts 
one of the posters. 

' ' Infamous slander ! Base lie ! ' ' replies 
the other, in enormous, arresting letters. 

What on earth can all this mean^ 

Ah yes, it is a manifestation of all the 
pettiness of our last little election con- 
tests which has remained placarded here, 
pilloried as it were, still legible in spite of 
the rains of two summers and the snows of 
one winter. It is surprising how these 
absurdities have survived, simply on 
scraps of paper pasted on the walls of 
houses. As a rule no wayfarer looks at 



276 WAR 

such things as he passes them, for in our 
day they have become too contemptible for 
a smile or a shrug of the shoulders. But 
on this wall, where the shells have ironi- 
cally treated them as they deserved, pierc- 
ing them with a thousand holes, they sud- 
denly assume, I know not why, an air irre- 
sistibly and indescribably comic; we owe 
them a moment of relaxation and hearty 
laughter — it is doubtless the only time in 
their miserable little existence that they 
have at least served some purpose. 

To-day who indeed remembers the scur- 
rilities of the past ? They who wrote them 
and who perhaps even now are brothers- 
in-arms, fighting side by side, would be the 
first to laugh at them. I will not say that 
later on, when the barbarians have at last 
gone away, party spirit will not again, here 
and there, attempt to raise its head. But 
none the less in this great war it has re- 
ceived a blow from which it will never 



WAR 277 

recover. Whatever the future may hold 
for us, nothing can alter the fact that once 
in France, from end to end of our battle 
front and during long months, there were 
these interlacing networks of little tunnels 
called trenches. And these trenches, 
which seemed at first sight nothing but 
horrible pits of sordid misery and suffer- 
ing, will actually have been the grandest 
of our temples, where we all came to- 
gether to be purified and to communicate, 
as it were, at the same holy table. 

As for our trenches, they begin close 
at hand, too close alas! to the martyred 
town ; there they are, in the midst of the 
mall, and we make our way thither 
through these desolate streets where there 
is no one to be seen. 

Everyone knows that almost all our 
provincial towns have their mall, a shady 
avenue of trees often centuries old; this 
one was reputed to be among the finest in 



278 WAR 

Prance. But it is indeed too risky to 
venture there, for death is ever prowling 
about and we can only cross it furtively 
by these tortuous tunnels, hastily exca- 
vated, which are called communication 
trenches. 

First of all we are shown a compre- 
hensive view of the mall through a loop- 
hole in a thick wall. Its melancholy is 
even more poignant than that of the 
streets, because this was once a favourite 
spot where formerly the good people of 
the town used to resort for relaxation and 
quiet gaiety. It stretches away out of 
sight between its two rows of elms. It is 
empty, to be sure, empty and silent. A 
funereal growth of grass carpets its long 
alleys with verdure, as if it were given 
up to the peace of a lasting abandonment, 
and in this exquisite evening hour the set- 
ting sun traces there row upon row of 
golden lines, reaching away into the dis- 



WAR 279 

tance among the lengthening shadows of 
the trees. It might be deemed empty in- 
deed, the mall of this martyred town, 
where at this moment nothing stirs, noth- 
ing is heard. But here and there it is fur- 
rowed with upturned earth, resembling, 
on a large scale, those heaps that rats and 
moles throw up in the fields. Now we can 
guess the meaning of this, for we are well 
acquainted with the system of clandestine 
passages used in modern warfare. From 
these ominous little excavations we con- 
clude at once that, contrary to expecta- 
tions, this place of mournful silence is 
populated by a terrible race of men con- 
cealed beneath its green grass ; that eager 
eyes survey it from all sides, that hidden 
cannon cover it, that it needs but an im- 
perceptible signal to cause a furious mani- 
festation of life to burst forth there out 
of the ground, with fire and blood and 
shouts and all the clamour of death. 



280 WAE 

And now by means of a narrow, care- 
fully hidden descent we penetrate into 
those paths termed communication 
trenches, which will bring us close, quite 
close, to the barbarians, so close that we 
shall almost hear them breathe. A walk 
along those trenches is a somewhat un- 
pleasant experience and seems intermi- 
nable. The atmosphere is hot and heavy ; 
you labour under the impression that 
people are pressing upon you too closely, 
and that your shoulders will rub against 
the earthen walls; and then at every ten 
or twelve paces there are little bends, in- 
tentionally abrupt, which force you to turn 
in your own ground; you are conscious 
of having walked ten times the distance 
and of having advanced scarcely at all. 
How great is the temptation to scale the 
parapet which borders the trench in order 
to reach the open air, or merely to put one 's 
head above it to see at least in which direc- 



WAR 281 

tion the path tends. But to do so would 
be certain death. And indeed there is 
something torturing in this sense of im- 
prisonment within this long labyrinth, and 
in the knowledge that in order to escape 
from it alive there is no help for it, but 
to retrace one's steps along that vague suc- 
cession of little turnings, strangling and 
obstructing. 

The heat and oppressiveness of the 
atmosphere in these tunnels is increased 
by the number of persons to be met there, 
men in horizon blue overcoats, flattening 
themselves against the wall, whom, never- 
theless, the visitor brushes against as he 
passes. In some parts the trenches are 
crowded like the galleries of an ant-hill, 
and if it suddenly became necessary to take 
flight, what a scene would ensue of con- 
fusion and crushing. To be sure the faces 
of these men are so smiling and at the 
same time so resolute that the idea of 



282 WAR 

their flight from any danger whatsoever 
does not even enter the mind. 

As the hour for their evening meal ap- 
proaches they begin to set up their little 
tables, here and there, in the safest cor- 
ners, in shelters with vaulted roofs. Ob- 
viously it is necessary to have supper early 
in order to be able to see, for certainly no 
lamps will be lighted. At nightfall it will 
be as dark here as in hell, and unless there 
is an alarm, an attack with sudden and 
flashing lights, they will have to feel their 
way about until to-morrow morning. 

Here comes a cheerful procession of 
men carrying soup. The soup has been 
rather long on the way through these wind- 
ing paths, but it is still hot and has a pleas- 
ant fragrance, and the messmates sit down, 
or get as near to that attitude as they can. 
What a strangely assorted company, and 
yet on what good terms they seem to be ! 
To-day I have no time to linger, but I re- 



WAR 283 

member lately sitting a long time and chat- 
ting at the end of a meal in a trench in 
the Argonne. Of that company, seated 
side by side, one was formerly a long- 
named conscientious objector, turned now 
into a heroic sergeant, whose eyes will 
actually grow misty with tears at the sight 
of one of our bullet-pierced flags borne 
along. Near him sat a former apache, 
whose cheeks, once pale from nights spent 
in squalid drinking-kens, were now 
bronzed by the open air, and he seemed at 
present a decent little fellow; and finally, 
the gayest of them all was a fine-looking 
soldier of about thirty, who no longer had 
time to shave his long beard, but never- 
theless preserved carefully a tonsure on 
the top of his head. And the comrade, 
who every other day did his best to con- 
serve this tell-tale manner of hairdressing, 
was formerly a root-and-branch anticleri- 
calist, by profession a zinc-maker at Belle- 
ville. 



284 WAR 

We continue our way, still without see- 
ing anything, following blindly. But we 
must be near the end of our journey, for 
we are told: 

"Now you must walk without making 
a sound and speak softly," and a little 
farther on, "Now you must not speak at 
all." 

And when one of us raises his head too 
high a sharp report rings out close to us, 
and a bullet whistles over our heads, misses 
its mark, and is lost in the brushwood, 
whence it strips the leaves. Afterwards 
silence falls again, more profound, 
stranger than ever. 

The terminus is a vaulted redoubt, its 
walls composed partly of clay, partly of 
sheet-iron. This blindage has been pierced 
with two or three little holes, which can 
be very quickly opened or shut by rapidly 
working mechanism, and it is through 
these holes alone that it is possible for us 



WAR 285 

to look out for a few seconds with some 
measure of safety, without receiving sud- 
denly a bullet in the head by way of the 
eyes. 

What, have we only come as far as this? 
After walking all this time we have not 
reached even the end of the mall. In front 
of us still extend, under the shade of the 
elms, straight and peaceful, its desolate 
grass-grown walks. The sun has blotted 
out the golden lines it was tracing a mo- 
ment ago, and twilight will presently be 
over all, and there is still no sound, not 
even the cries of birds calling one another 
home to roost ; it is like the immobility and 
silence of death. 

Looking in a different direction through 
another opening in the sheet-iron, on the 
other bank (the right bank), scarcely 
twenty yards away from us, quite close 
to the edge of the little river, of which we 
hold the left bank, we notice perfectly 



286 WAR 

new earth-works, masked by the kindly 
protection of branches, and there, as in 
the mall, silence prevails, but it is the same 
silence, too obviously studied, suspicious, 
full of dread. Then someone whispers in 
my ear : 

"It is They who are there." 

It is They who are there, as indeed we 
had surmised, for in many other places 
we had already observed similar dreadful 
regions, close to our own, steeped in a de- 
ceptive silence, characteristic of ultra-mod- 
ern warfare. Yes, it is They who are there, 
still there, well entrenched in the shelter 
of our own French soil, which does not 
even fall in upon them and smother them. 
Sons of that vile race which has the taint 
of lying in its blood, they have taught all 
the armies of the world the art of making 
even inanimate objects lie, even the out- 
ward semblance of things. Their trenches 
under their verdure disguise themselves 



WAR 287 

as innocent furrows ; the houses that shel- 
ter their staffs assume the aspect of de- 
serted ruins. They are never to be seen, 
these hidden enemies; they advance and 
invade like white ants or gnawing worms, 
and then at the most unexpected moment 
of day or night, preceded by all varieties 
of diabolical preparations that they have 
devised, burning liquids, blinding gas, 
asphyxiating gas, they leap out from the 
ground like beasts in a menagerie whose 
cages have been unfastened. How humili- 
ating! After prodigious efforts in me- 
chanics and chemistry to revert to the 
custom of the age of cave-dwellers; after 
fighting for more than a year with lethal 
weapons perfected with infernal ingenuity 
for slaughter at long range to be found 
thus, almost on top of one another for 
months at a time, with straining nerves 
and every sense alert, and yet all hidden 
away under cover, not daring to budge an 
inch! 



288 WAR 

How horrible ! I believe they were actu- 
ally whispering in those trenches opposite. 
Like ourselves they speak in low voices; 
nevertheless the German intonation is un- 
mistakable. They are talking to one 
another, those invisible beings. In the in- 
finite silence that surrounds us, their 
muffled whispers come to us, as it were, 
from below, from the bowels of the earth. 
An abrupt command, doubtless uttered by 
one of their officers, calls them to order, 
and they are suddenly silent. But we have 
heard them, heard them close to us, and 
that murmur, proceeding, as it were, from 
burrowing animals, falls more mourn- 
fully upon the ear than any clamour of 
battle. 

It is not that their voices were brutal ; 
on the contrary, they sounded almost 
musical, so much so that had we not known 
who the talkers were we should not have 
felt that shudder of disgust pass through 



WAR 289 

our flesh; we should have been inclined, 
rather, to say to them : 

"Come, a truce to this game of death! 
Are we not men and brothers ? Come out 
of your shelters and let us shake hands." 

But it is only too well known that if 
their voices are human and their faces too, 
more or less, it is not so with their souls. 
They lack the vital moral senses, loyalty, 
honour, remorse, and that sentiment espe- 
cially, which is perhaps noblest of all and 
yet most elementary, which even animals 
sometimes possess, the sentiment of pity. 

I remember a phrase of Victor Hugo 
which formerly seemed to me exaggerated 
and obscure; he said: 

"Night, which in a wild beast takes the 
place of a soul." 

To-day, thanks to the revelation of the 
German soul, I understand the metaphor. 
What else can there be but impenetrable, 
rayless night in the soul of their baleful 

19 



290 WAR 

Emperor and in the soul of their heir ap- 
parent, his ferret face dwarfed by a black 
busby with the charming adornment of a 
death's head? All their lives they have 
had no other thought than to construct en- 
gines for slaughter, to invent explosives 
and poisons for slaughter, to train soldiers 
for slaughter. For the sake of their mon- 
strous personal vanity they organised all 
the barbarism latent in the depths of the 
German race ; they organised (I repeat the 
word because though it is not good French 
alas! it is essentially German), they "or- 
ganised," then, its indigenous ferocity ; or- 
ganised its grotesque megalomania ; organ- 
ised its sheep-like submissiveness and 
imbecile credulity. And afterwards they 
did not die of horror at the sight of their 
own work ! Can it be that they still dare 
to go on living, these creatures of dark- 
ness? In the sight of so many tears, so 
many torments, such vast ossuaries, that 



WAR 291 

infamous pair continue peacefully sleep- 
ing, eating, receiving homage, and doubt- 
less they will pose for sculptors and be 
immortalised in bronze or marble — all this 
when they ought to be subjected to a re- 
finement of old Chinese tortures. Oh, all 
this that I say about them is not for the 
sake of uselessly stirring up the hatred 
of the world ; no, but I believe it to be my 
duty to do all that in me lies to arrest that 
perilous forgetfulness which will once 
again shut its eyes to their crimes. So 
much do I fear our light-hearted French 
ways, our simple, confiding disposition. 
We are quite capable of allowing the ten- 
tacles of the great devil-fish gradually to 
worm their way again into our flesh. Who 
knows if our country will not soon be 
swarming again with a vermin of count- 
less spies, crafty parasites, navvies work- 
ing clandestinely at concrete platforms for 
German cannon under the very floors of 



292 WAR 

our dwellings. Oh, let us never forget that 
this predatory race is incurably treach- 
erous, thievish, murderous ; that no treaty 
of peace will ever bind it, and that until 
it is crushed, until its head has been 
cut off — its terrible Gorgon head which 
is Prussian Imperialism — it will always 
begin again. 

When in the streets of our towns we 
meet those young men who are disabled, 
mutilated, who walk along slowly in 
groups, supporting one another, or those 
young men who are blinded and are led 
by the hand, and all those women, bowed 
down, as it were, under their veils of crape, 
let us reflect: 

"This is their work. And the man who 
spent so long a time preparing all this for 
us is their Kaiser — and he, if he be not 
crushed, will think of nothing but how he 
may begin all over again to-morrow.' ' 

And outside railway stations where men 



WAR 293 

are entrained for the front, we may meet 
some young woman with a little child in 
her arms, restraining the tears that stand 
in her brave, sorrowful eyes, who has come 
to say good-bye to a soldier in field kit. 
At the sight of her let us say to ourselves : 

"This man, whose return is so passion- 
ately longed for, the Kaiser's shrapnel 
doubtless awaits; to-morrow he may be 
hurled, nameless, among thousands of 
others, into those charnel-houses in which 
Germany delights, and which she will ask 
nothing better than to be allowed to begin 
filling again." 

Especially when we see passing by in 
their new blue uniforms the "young 
class," our dearly loved sons, who march 
away so splendidly with pride and joy in 
their boyish eyes, with bunches of roses 
at the ends of their rifles, let us consider 
well our holy vengeance against the enemy 
who are lying in wait for them yonder — 



294 WAR 

and against the great Accursed, whose soul 
is black as night. 

From that roofed-over redoubt where 
we are at present, whose iron flaps we have 
to raise if we would look out, the mall is 
still visible with its green grass ; the mall, 
lying there so peaceful in the dim light 
of evening. The barbarians are no more 
to be heard; they have stopped talking; 
they do not move or breathe ; and only a 
sense of uneasy sadness, I had almost said 
of discouraged sadness, remains, at the 
thought that they are so near. 

But in order to be restored to hope and 
cheerful confidence, it is sufficient to turn 
back along the communication trenches, 
where the men are just finishing their sup- 
per in the pleasant twilight. As soon as 
our soldiers are far enough away from 
those others to talk freely and laugh freely, 
there is suddenly a wave of healthy gaiety 
and of perfect and reassuring confidence. 



WAR 295 

Here is the true fountain-head of our 
irresistible strength ; from this source we 
draw that marvellous energy which char- 
acterises our attacks and will secure the 
final victory. Very striking at first sight 
in the groups around these tables is the 
excellent understanding, a kind of affec- 
tionate familiarity, that unites officers and 
men. For a long time this spirit has ex- 
isted in the Navy, where protracted exile 
from home and dangers shared in the close 
association of life on board ship neces- 
sarily draw men nearer together; but I 
do not think my comrades of the land 
forces will be angry with me if I say that 
this familiarity, so compatible with dis- 
cipline, is a more recent development with 
them than with us. One of the benefits 
conferred upon them by trench warfare is 
the necessity of living thus nearer to their 
soldiers, and this gives them an oppor- 
tunity of winning their affection. At pres- 



296 WAR 

ent they know nearly all those comrades 
of theirs who are simple privates; they 
call them by name and talk to them like 
friends. And so, when the solemn moment 
comes for the attack, when, instead of 
driving them in front of them with whips, 
after the fashion of the savages over there, 
they lead them, after the manner of the 
French, it is hardly necessary for them to 
turn round to see if everyone is following 
them. 

Moreover, they are very sure that, if 
they fall, their humble comrades will not 
fail to hasten to their side, and, at the risk 
of their own lives, defend them, or carry 
them tenderly away. 

Now it is to this superhuman war, and 
especially to the common existence in the 
trenches, that we owe the ennobling in- 
fluence of this concord, those sublime acts 
of mutual devotion, at which we are 
tempted to bend the knee. And in part is 



WAR 297 

it not likewise owing to life in the trenches, 
to long and more intimate conversations 
between officers and men, that these gleams 
of beauty have penetrated into the minds 
of all, even of those whose intelligence 
seemed in the last degree unimpression- 
able and jaded. They know now, our sol- 
diers, even the least of them, that France 
has never been so worthy of admiration, 
and that its glory casts a light upon them 
all. They know that a race is imperish- 
able in which the hearts of all awaken 
thus to life, and that Neutral Countries, 
even those whose eyes seem blinded by the 
most impenetrable scales, will in the end 
see clearly and bestow upon us the glorious 
name of liberators. 

Oh let us bless these trenches of ours, 
where all ranks of society intermingle, 
where friendships have been formed which 
yesterday would not have seemed possible, 
where men of the world will have learnt 



298 WAR 

that the soul of a peasant, an artisan, a 
common workman may prove itself as 
great and good as that of a very fine gentle- 
man, and of even deeper interest, being 
more impulsive, more transparent and 
with less veneer upon it. 

In trenches, communication trenches, 
little dark labyrinths, little tunnels where 
men suffer and sacrifice themselves, there 
will be found established our best and pur- 
est school of socialism. But by this term 
socialism, a term too often profaned, I 
mean true socialism, be it understood, 
which is synonymous with tolerance and 
brotherhood, that socialism, in a word, 
which Christ came to teach us in that clear 
formula, which in its adorable simplicity 
sums up all formulae, "Love one another." 



ii 



XXV 

THE TWO GORGON HEADS 

My plan is first to take possession. At 
a later stage I can always find learned men 
to prove that I was acting within my just 
rights/' 

Frederick II. 

(called, for want of a better epithet, the 
Great). 

I 
Their Kaiser 

April, 1916. 
There are certain faces of the accursed, 
which reveal in the end with the coming 
of old age the accumulated horror and 
darkness that has been seething in the 
depths of the soul. The features are by no 
means always ignoble, but on these faces 
something is imprinted which is a thou- 
sand times worse than ugliness, and none 

299 



300 WAR 

can bear to look upon them. Thus it is 
with their Kaiser. The sight of his sin- 
ister presentment alone, a mere glimpse of 
the smallest portrait of him reproduced 
in a newspaper, is sufficient to make the 
blood run cold. Oh that viperine eye of 
his, shaded by flaccid lids, that smile 
twisted awry by all his secret vices, his 
utter hypocrisy, morbid brutality, added 
to cold ferocity, and overweening arro- 
gance which in itself is enough to provoke 
a horsewhip to lash him of its own accord. 
Once in an old temple in Japan I saw a 
gruesome work of art, which was consid- 
ered a masterpiece of genre painting, and 
had been preserved for centuries, wrapped 
in a veil, in one of the coffers containing 
temple treasures. 

It is well known how highly the Japanese 
esteem gruesome works of art, and what 
masters their artists are in the cult of the 
horrible. It was a mask of a human face, 



WAR 301 

with features, if anything, rather regular 
and refined, but if you looked at it atten- 
tively its appalling expression, at the same 
time cruel and lifeless, haunted you for 
days and nights. From out the cadaverous 
flesh, livid and lined, gleamed its two eyes, 
partly closed, but one more so than the 
other, and they seemed to wink, as if to 
say: 

"For a long time, while I lay waiting 
there in my box, I meditated some ghastly 
surprise for you, and at last you have 
come ; you are in my power, and here it is. ' ' 

Well, for those who have eyes to see, 
the face of their Kaiser is as shocking as 
that mask, hidden away in the old temple 
over there ; it matters not in what kind of 
helmet, more or less savage in design, he 
may choose to trick himself out, whether 
it have a spike or a death's head. In all 
the years during which the terrible ex- 
pression of this man has haunted me, I 



302 WAR 

not only shared the presentiment common 
to everyone else that he was " meditating 
some surprise for us," but I had a fore- 
boding that his plot would be laid with 
diabolical wickedness and would prove 
more terrible than all the crimes of old, 
uncivilised times. And I said to myself : 

"It is of vital importance for the safe- 
guard of humanity to kill that thing.' ' 

Indeed he should have been killed, the 
hyena slain, before his latent rabidness had 
completely developed, or at least he should 
have been chained up, muzzled, impris- 
oned behind close set and solid bars. 

What could have possessed the anar- 
chists, to whom such an opportunity pre- 
sented itself of redeeming their charac- 
ter, of deserving the gratitude of the 
world, what could have possessed them? 
When there is question of killing a sover- 
eign they attempt the life of the charm- 
ing young King of Spain. From the Aus- 



WAR 303 

trian court, which held a far more suitable 
victim, they select and stab the mysterious 
and lovely Empress, who never harmed a 
soul. And of the quartet of kings in the 
Balkans, their choice fell upon the King 
of Greece, when there was that monster 
Coburg close at hand, an opportunity truly 
unique. 

Their Kaiser, their unspeakable, Pro- 
tean Kaiser, whenever it seems that every- 
thing possible has been said about him, 
bewilders one by breaking out in some new 
direction which no one could ever have 
foreseen. After his almost doltish ob- 
stinacy in persistently posing his Germany 
as the victim who was attacked, in spite 
of most blinding evidence to the contrary, 
most formal written proofs, most crushing 
confessions which escaped the lips of his 
accomplices, did he not just recently feel 
a need to " swear before God" that his 
conscience was pure and that he had not 



304 WAR 

wished for war ? Before what God ? Ob- 
viously before bis own, "his old God," 
proper to himself, whom in private he 
must assuredly call, "my old Beelzebub." 
What excellent taste, moreover, to couple 
that epithet "old" with such a name! 

This Kaiser of theirs seems to have re- 
ceived from his old Beelzebub not only a 
mission to spread abroad the uttermost 
mourning, to cause the most abundant out- 
pouring of blood and tears, but also a 
mission to shoot down all forms of beauty, 
all religious memorials ; a mission to pro- 
fane everything, defile everything, and dis- 
figure everything that he should fail to 
destroy. He has succeeded even in bring- 
ing dishonour on science, by degrading it 
to play the part of accomplice in his 
crimes. Moreover it is not merely that 
this war of his, this war which he forced 
upon us with such damnable deliberation, 
will have been a thousand times more de- 



WAR 305 

structive of human life than all the wars 
of the past collectively, but he must needs 
likewise attack with vindictive fury, he 
and his rabble of followers, all those treas- 
ures of art which should have remained 
an inviolable heritage of civilised Europe. 
And if ever he had succeeded in realising 
his dream of morbid vanity and becoming 
absolute tyrant of the world, not by means 
of explosives and scrap-iron alone would 
he have achieved the ruin of all art, but 
through the incurably bad taste of his Ger- 
many. It is sufficient to have visited Ber- 
lin, the capital city of pinchbeck, of the 
gilded decorations of the parvenu, to form 
an idea of what our towns would have 
become. And with a shudder one contem- 
plates the rapid and final decadence of 
those wonderful Eastern towns, Stamboul, 
Damascus, Bagdad, upon the day when 
they should submit to his law. 
This unspeakable Kaiser of theirs, how 
20 



306 WAR 

cunningly sometimes he adds to dishonour 
a touch of the grotesque. For instance, 
did he not lately offer as a pledge to that 
insignificant King of Greece his word of 
a Hohenzollern? The day after the viola- 
tion of Belgium to dare to offer his word 
was admirable enough, but to add that his 
word was that of a Hohenzollern, what a 
happy conceit! Is it the result of dense 
unconsciousness or of the insolent irony 
with which he regards his timid brother- 
in-law, at whose little army, on the occa- 
sion of a visit to Athens, he scoffed so dis- 
dainfully? Who that has some slight 
tincture of history is ignorant of the fact 
that during the five hundred years of its 
notoriety the accursed line of the Hohen- 
zollern has never produced anything but 
shameless liars, kites that prey on flesh. 
As early as 1762 did not the great Empress 
Maria Theresa write of them in these 
terms : 



WAR 307 

"All the world knows what value to at- 
tach to the King of Prussia and his word. 
There is no sovereign in Europe who has 
not suffered from his perfidy. And such 
a king as this would impose himself upon 
Germany as dictator and protector! 
Under a despotism which repudiates every 
principle, the Prussian monarchy will one 
day be the source of infinite calamity, not 
only to Germany, but likewise to the whole 
of Europe. " 

Unhappy King of Greece, who ap- 
proached too near to the glare of the Gor- 
gon, and lies to-day annihilated almost by 
its baleful influence ! Should not his ex- 
ample be as much an object lesson — though 
without the heroism and the glory — for 
sovereigns of neutral nations who have 
still been spared, as the examples of the 
King of Belgium and the King of Serbia? 

Their Kaiser, whose mere glance is 
ominous of death, baffles reason and com- 



308 WAR 

mon sense. The morbid degeneracy of his 
brain is undeniable, and yet in certain re- 
spects it is nevertheless a brain excellently 
ordered for planning evil, and it has made 
a special study of the art of slaughter. 
For the honour of humanity let us grant 
that he is mad, as a certain prince of Sax- 
ony has just publicly declared. 

Agreed ; he is mad. His case may actu- 
ally be classified as teratological, and in 
any other country but Germany this war 
of his would have resulted for him in a 
strait-waistcoat and a cell. But alas for 
Europe ! the accident of his birth has made 
him Kaiser of the one nation capable of 
tolerating him and of obeying him — a 
people cruel by nature and rendered fero- 
cious by civilisation, as Goethe avers; a 
people of infinite stupidity, as Schopen- 
hauer confesses in his last solemn 
testament. 

In some respects this infinite stupidity 



WAR 309 

he himself shares. Otherwise would he 
have failed so irremediably in his first out- 
set in 1914 as to imagine up to the very- 
last moment that England would not stir, 
even in face of Belgium's great sacrifice. 1 
And is there not at least as much folly 
as ferocity in his massacres of civilians, 
his torpedoing of ships belonging to neu- 
tral countries, his outrages in America, his 
Zeppelins, his asphyxiating gas ; all those 
odious crimes which he personally insti- 

1 In addition to a thousand other widely known 
examples of his shameless knavery, I record another 
instance, which, moreover, may easily be verified; 
an instance perhaps not yet sufficiently widely pub- 
lished. Be it known to everyone that on August 
2nd, 1914, on the very eve of the violation of Bel- 
gium, when the German Army was already massed 
on the frontier and all the orders had been given 
for the attack the next day, King Albert called upon 
the Kaiser for an explanation. The. Kaiser replied 
officially through his diplomatists : 

" The Belgians have no cause for alarm. I 
have not the slightest intention of repudiating my 
signature. ' ' 



310 WAR 

gated, and which have had merely the re- 
sult of concentrating upon himself and his 
German Empire universal hatred and 
disgust? 

After forty years of feverish prepara- 
tion, with such formidable resources at his 
disposal, shrinking from no measures how- 
ever atrocious and vile, trammelled by no 
law of humanity, by no pang of conscience, 
to wallow thus in blood, and yet after all 
to achieve nothing but failure — there is no 
other explanation possible ; some essential 
quality must be lacking in his murderous 
brain. And the nation must indeed be 
German in character still to suffer itself to 
be led onwards to its downfall by an un- 
balanced lunatic responsible for such 
blunders. They are led onwards to down- 
fall and butchery. And is there never a 
limit to the sheepish submission of a people 
who at this very moment are suffering 
themselves to be slaughtered like mere 



WAR 311 

cattle in attacks directed with imbecile 
fury by a microcephalous youth, equally 
devoid of intelligence and soul? 

II 

Ferdinand of Coburg 
But recently it would have seemed an 
impossible wager to undertake to find an 
even more abominable monster than their 
Kaiser and their Crown Prince. Never- 
theless the wager has been made and won ; 
this Coburg has been found. 

And to think that in his time he aroused 
the enthusiasm of the majority of our 
women of France ! About the year 1913, 
when I alone was beginning to nail him 
to the pillory, they were exalting his 
name and flaunting his colours. ' ' Paladin 
of the Cross" — as such he was popularly 
known among us. Oh, a sincere paladin 
he was, to be sure, wearing the scapular, 
steeped in Masses, after the fashion of 



312 WAR 

Louis XI., yet one fine morning secretly 
forcing apostasy upon his son. Moreover 
we know that to-day, for our entertain- 
ment, he is making preparations for a sec- 
ond comedy of conversion to the Catholic 
faith, which he recently renounced for po- 
litical reasons, and over there he will find 
priests ready to bless the operation and to 
keep a straight face the while. 

He, too, has a Gorgon's head, and his 
face, like the Kaiser's, is marked with the 
stigmata of knavery and crime. Twenty- 
five years ago, at the railway station of 
Sofia, when for the first time I came under 
the malevolent glance of his small eyes, 
I felt my nerves vibrate with that shudder 
of disgust which is an instinctive warning 
of the proximity of a monster, and I asked : 

"Who is that vampire?" 

Someone replied in a low, apprehensive 
voice : 

"It is our prince; you should bow to 
him." 



WAR 313 

Ah, no indeed; not that! 

In private life this man has proved him- 
self a cowardly assassin, committing his 
murders from a safe distance, for he pru- 
dently crossed the border whenever his 
executioner had "work to do" by his 
orders. And then, as soon as any particu- 
lar headsman threatened to compromise 
him he would take effective steps to cripple 
him. 1 

And this man, too, offers up prayers in 
imitation of that other. Recently, when 
there was a hope that his great accomplice 
was at last about to die of the hereditary 
taint in his blood, he knelt for a long time 
between two rows of Germans, convoked 
as audience, to plead with heaven for his 
recovery — a monster praying on behalf of 
another monster — and he arose, steeped in 
divine grace, and said to the audience : 

"I have never before prayed so fer- 
vently." 

1 Panitza, Stambouloff, etc. 



314 WAR 

Those heavy-witted Boches, for whose 
benefit these apish antics were performed, 
were even they able to restrain their wild 
laughter ? In political life, likewise, he is 
an assassin, attempting the life of nations. 
After his first foul act of treason against 
Serbia, his former ally, whom he took in 
the rear without any declaration of war, 
he endeavoured, it will be remembered, to 
throw upon his ministers the blame of a 
crime which was threatening to turn out 
badly. And again without warning he 
deals another traitorous blow to the same 
race of heroes, already overwhelmed by 
immense hordes of barbarians, like a high- 
wayman who, under pretence of helping, 
comes from behind to give the finishing 
stroke to a man already at grips with a 
band of robbers. 

Poor little Serbia, now grown great and 
sublime ! Lately, in my first moments of 
indignation at the report that reached me 



WAR 315 

of deeds of horror perpetrated in Thrace 
and Macedonia, I had accused her unde- 
servedly of sharing in the guilt. Once 
again in these pages I tender her with 
all my heart my amende honorable. 

If Germany's entente with Turkey was 
so little capable of being accomplished un- 
assisted that it was found necessary to 
have recourse to the * i suicide ' ' of the hered- 
itary prince, the entente with Bulgaria 
was made spontaneously. Their Kaiser 
and this scion of the Coburgs, who emu- 
lates him, and is, as it were, his duplicate 
in miniature, found each other fatally easy 
to understand. That such sympathy was 
likely to exist between them might have 
been gathered from a mere comparison of 
the two faces, each bearing the same ex- 
pression of beasts that prowl in the night. 
How was it that our diplomatists, ac- 
credited to the little court of Sofia, sus- 
pected nothing nearly twenty months ago, 



316 WAR 

when the treaty of brigandage was signed 
in secret? And to-day, until one devours 
the other, behold them united, these two 
beings, the refuse of humanity, compared 
with whom the foulest, most hardened 
offenders, who drag a cannon-ball along in 
a convict's prison, seem to have committed 
nothing but harmless and trifling offences. 
Arouse yourselves, then, neutral nations, 
great and small, who still fail to realise 
that had it not been for us your turn would 
have come to be trampled underfoot like 
Belgium, like Serbia and Montenegro only 
yesterday! The world will not breathe 
freely until these ultimate barbarians have 
been completely crushed; how is it that 
you have not felt this? What else can be 
necessary to open your eyes ? If it is not 
enough for you to witness in our coun- 
try all the ruin inflicted on us of set pur- 
pose and to no useful end, to read a vast 
number of irrefutable testimonies of f uri- 



WAR 317 

ous massacres which spared not even our 
little children; if all this is not enough 
look nearer home, look at the insolent 
irony with which this predatory race 
brings pressure to bear upon you, look at 
all the outrages, done audaciously or by 
stealth, which have already been com- 
mitted on the other side of the ocean. Or 
again, if indeed you are blind to that which 
goes on around you, at least survey briefly 
all the writings, during centuries, of their 
men of letters, their "great men." You 
will be horrified to discover on every page 
the most barefaced apology for violence, 
rapine, and crime. Thus you will estab- 
lish the fact that all the horror with which 
Europe is inundated to-day was contained 
from the beginning in embryo there in Ger- 
man brains, and, moreover, that no other 
race on earth would have dared to de- 
nounce itself with such cynical insensi- 
bility. And you, priests or monks, belong- 



318 WAR 

ing to the clergy of a neighbouring coun- 
try, who reproach us with impiety and are 
the blindest of men in proselytising for 
our enemies, turn over a few pages of the 
official manifesto addressed to the Belgian 
bishops, and tell us what to think of the 
soul of a people who continually take in 
vain the name of the "All Highest" in 
their burlesque prayers, and then make 
furious attacks on all the sanctuaries of 
religion, cathedrals, or humble village 
churches, overthrowing the crucifixes and 
massacring the priests. Is it logically pos- 
sible for anyone, not of their accursed race, 
to love the Germans ? That a nation may 
remain neutral I can understand, but only 
from fear, or from lack of due prepara- 
tion, or perhaps, without realising it, for 
the lure of a certain momentary gain, 
through a little mistaken and shortsighted 
selfishness. Oh, doubtless it is a terrible 
thing to hurl oneself into such a fray ! Yet 



WAR 319 

neutrality, hesitation even, become worse 
than dangerous mistakes ; they are already 
almost crimes. 

An insane scoundrel dreamed of forcing 
upon us all the ways of two thousand years 
ago, the degrading serfdom of ancient 
days, the dark ages of old; he plotted to 
bring about for his own profit a general 
bankruptcy of progress, liberty, human 
thought, and after us, you, you neutral 
nations, were designated as sacrifices to 
his insatiable, ogreish appetite. At least 
help us a little to bring to a more rapid 
conclusion this orgy of robbery, destruc- 
tion, massacres, and bloodshed. Enough, 
let us awaken from this nightmare! 
Enough, let the whole world arise ! Who- 
soever holds back to-day, will he not be 
ashamed to keep his place in the sun of 
victory and peace when it once more shines 
upon us? And we, when at last we have 
laid low the rabid hyena, after pouring 



320 WAR 

out our blood in streams, should we not 
almost have a right to say, with our 
weapons still in our hands : 

" You neutral nations, who will profit by 
the deliverance, having taken no part in 
the struggle, the least you can do is to 
repay us in some measure with your ter- 
ritory or with your gold?" 

Oh, everywhere let the tocsin clang, a 
full peal, ringing from end to end of the 
earth ; let the supreme alarm ring out, and 
let the drums of all the armies roll the 
charge! And down with the German 
Beast ! 



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